Wu Shaozhi (1905-1998), agricultural educator, maize genetics and breeding scientist. A native of Jiashan County, Anhui Province. He graduated from the Department of Agronomy, College of Agriculture, Jinling University in 1929. He studied at the College of Agriculture, University of Minnesota, USA from 1934 to 1938 and obtained a doctorate. After returning to China in 1938, he served as a professor at the College of Agriculture, Guangxi University, and the College of Agriculture, Jinling University; and a technical commissioner at the Guizhou Provincial Agricultural Improvement Institute. After 1949, he served as vice president of Henan Agricultural College; director of the Chinese Agricultural Society, Chinese Crop Society, and Chinese Genetic Society; member of the Academic Committee of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences; member of the Science and Technology Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries; representative of the 3rd to 6th National People's Congress He has been engaged in maize seed research for a long time and has made outstanding contributions to the development of maize production in our country. In 1939, the article "The relationship between the blood of maize inbred lines and the performance of hybrid combinations" was developed in the Journal of the American Society of Agronomy, which proposed that inbred lines from different sources have greater hybrid advantages than inbred lines with close relatives. This scientific conclusion was recognized by corn breeders at home and abroad. In 1949, an academic report on "Using Hybridization Advantage to Improve Maize Yield" was published at the National Agricultural Work Conference, and the suggestion of breeding and promoting intervariety hybrids as the main way to develop the utilization of maize heterosis was adopted by the five-year plan for the popularization of inbred lines promulgated by the State Council and the "National Maize Improvement Plan" formulated by the Ministry of Agriculture. In 1952, he cooperated with Luoyang Agricultural Experimental Station to breed the first comprehensive maize variety "Luoyang Mixed Selection No. 1" that was widely promoted in China. At the founding meeting of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1957, he read the paper "On the Utilization and Maintenance of Maize Heterosis from the Promotion of a Comprehensive Variety - Luoyang Mixed Selection No. 1", which opened up a new way for the utilization of heterosis. Later, he published "The Utilization of Heterosis in Maize Production in New China and Its Prospects", "Three Suggestions for Current Maize Hybrid Breeding Work", "The Effect of Remote Breeding on Maize Inbred Lines and the Possibility of Utilization in Production" and other papers. In 1956, the remote breeding method he advocated has been adopted by breeding units across the country. He led the Maize Research Laboratory of Henan Agricultural University, which has successively developed and widely promoted excellent corn hybrids such as Yunong 704, Yudan No. 5, and Yushuang No. 5, and won major scientific and technological achievement awards from the National and Henan Provincial Science Conferences respectively.

Wu Shaojian, an agricultural educator and crop breeder, is one of the founders of maize breeding in China. He has been engaged in the research on the utilization of maize heterosis for a long time, and first proposed the principle of rationally preparing maize double-crosses and selecting double-ring lines according to the similarities and differences of inbred lines or the distance and proximity of relatives. In the early 1950s, he advocated the breeding and utilization of maize inter-variety hybrids and complex seeds in China, and adopted the off-site breeding method to accelerate the generation process, which contributed to the development of maize breeding in our country.