On September 26, a list of 73 projects were released and officially added to the National Basic Research Program (also called the 973 Program), China’s on-going national basic research program. The program was approved by the Chinese Government in June 1997 and is organized and implemented by the Ministry of Science and Technology. The September release is the second batch of key technological projects revealed since the start of the 11th Five-year Plan (2006-2010), cov-ering the fields of agriculture, energy infor-mation, environment, health and material sci-ence. Last year, the Central Government ear-marked over 1.2 billion yuan for the program.