Pioneer has around 1,400 business partners in northeast China, with 350 in Heilongjiang. Over 30 percent of its sales network in northeast China is located in the province.

"Over the last several years, we have doubled our investment in China and will continue this pace of investment in the next five years," Schickler said. Delaware-based DuPont spends $2 billion on research every year, 60 percent of it in its agriculture and food businesses, including Pioneer.

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"We are going to continue investing in local research, seed production, education," Schickler said. It "all results in developing high-quality seed, transferring the seed knowledge to farmers."

Ding Lixin, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing, said ensuring sufficient grain supply is critical to China's development and the government needs to take more measures to promote the protection of intellectual property rights and combat fake seeds.

"When local companies become bigger and more competitive with their own seed products it will be different," Ding said.

"That will help the government create new policies to support their research and development, and so allow foreign companies to increase investments and patent technologies in China."

Animal feed production and the bio-chemical market have been boosted by a booming food-processing industry.

China's demand for corn has surged. More than 70 percent of the country's annual corn production was consumed by these three industries.

In the northeast, Pioneer will develop its research in joint ventures.

The aim is to extend its research network into key corn-growing areas. It's also active in deployment and development of drought-tolerant products for China.

Since establishing itself in the country in 1997, Pioneer has founded three joint venture seed factories and employed nearly 700 workers. It plans to increase its research centers in the country to 15 from 11 by 2017.