China expects a record number of baby giant pandas to be born this year, as 10 female pandas are now pregnant and another 23 are in estrus at two giant panda breeding and research bases in the southwestern Sichuan Province.

Qizhen, a four-and-half-year-old female panda at the Giant Panda Breeding and Research Base in the provincial capital Chengdu, was confirmed by zoologists Friday to be pregnant, shortly after she found her first ever Mr. Right at the base.

Qizhen is the 10th female giant panda to become pregnant this year, said Zhang Zhihe, director of the Chengdu-based Giant Panda Breeding Technology Committee.

Zhang and his colleagues will use state-of-the-art artificial fertilization technologies to impregnate more female pandas in estrus -- including 13 at the Chengdu base and 10 at the Wolong Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center.

"We expect to welcome a record number of baby pandas by this autumn," said Zhang.

In 2003, 19 baby pandas were born via natural or artificial insemination in China's breeding bases and 16 of them survived.

The survival rate of panda cubs has therefore risen from 30 percent several decades ago to nearly 90 percent now as a result of modern methods to promote mating and feeding.

Giant pandas show little instinctive behavior in captivity, especially sexual desire, essential for natural mating and conception.

Forestry authority statistics show fewer than 10 percent of male giant pandas mate naturally and fewer than 30 percent of females conceive naturally.

Female pandas normally enter estrus at age four or five and have only one chance for pregnancy a year. After 160 days of pregnancy, they deliver only one or two cubs.

Chinese zoologists have worked hard in recent years to tackle the endangered animals' breeding problems and have resorted to artificial insemination, frozen semen and even showing the pandas videos on natural mating in the wild to arouse their latent sexual instincts.

The country has made remarkable progress in breeding giant pandas since the 1990s. Ten were born 2002, and 16 in 2003.

There are 160 giant pandas raised in an artificial environment worldwide, two-thirds of which are living at the Wolong Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center and Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding and Research Base.

As one of the most ancient and the most endangered species in the world, the number of wild giant pandas is estimated at around 1,000 worldwide, most living in the high mountains around the Sichuan Basin in southwest China.

(Xinhua News Agency April 4, 2004)