05-22-2021, 10:31 AM
Yuan Longping (Chinese: 袁隆平; September 7, 1930 – May 22, 2021) was a Chinese agronomist, known for developing the first hybrid rice varieties in the 1970s.
Hybrid rice has since been grown in dozens of countries in Africa, America, and Asia—providing a robust food source in areas with a high risk of famine. For his contributions, Yuan is always called the "Father of Hybrid Rice" by the Chinese media.[2][3] On May 22, Yuan Longping died of multiple organ failure.[1]
Yuan was born in Beijing in 1930. [4]His ancestral home is in De'an County, Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province. During the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War, he moved with his family and attended school in many places, including Hunan, Chongqing, Hankou and Nanjing.
He graduated from Southwest Agricultural College (now part of Southwest University) in 1953 and began his teaching career at an agriculture school in Anjiang, Hunan Province. He married one of his students, Deng Ze (邓则) in 1964,[5][6] they have two children, Yuan Ding'an (袁定安) and Yuan Dingjiang (袁定江).[7]
He came up with an idea for hybridizing rice in the 1960s when a series of harmful political policies (such as the Great Leap Forward) had plunged China into an unprecedented famine that caused the deaths of millions of Chinese citizens.
Since then, Yuan had devoted himself to the research and development of a better rice breed. In 1964, he happened to find a natural rice plant for use in his hybridization experiments that had obvious advantages over other species. Greatly encouraged, he began to study the elements of this particular breed.
The biggest problem by then was having no known method to reproduce hybrid rice in mass quantities, and that was the problem that Yuan set out to solve. In 1964, Yuan created his theory of using a hypothetical naturally-mutated male-sterile strain of rice that he predicted most probably existed for the creation of a new reproductive hybrid rice species, and in two years' time he managed to successfully find a few individuals of such a mutated male-sterile rice that he could use for his research. Subsequent experiments proved his original theory feasible, making that theory his most important contribution to hybrid rice.
Yuan went on to solve more problems than followed from the first. The first experimental hybrid rice species that were cultivated didn't show any significant advantage over commonly grown species, so Yuan suggested crossbreeding rice with a more distant relative: the wild rice. In 1970, he found a particularly important species of wild rice that he ended up using for the creation of a high-yield hybrid rice species.[citation needed] In 1973, in cooperation with others, he was finally able to establish a complete process for creating and reproducing this high-yield hybrid rice species.
The next year they successfully cultivated a hybrid rice species which had great advantages over conventionally grown rice. It yielded 20 percent more per unit than that of common rice breeds, putting China in the lead worldwide in rice production. For this achievement, Yuan Longping was dubbed the "Father of Hybrid Rice."[8]
At present, as much as 50 percent of China's total number of rice paddies grow Yuan Longping's hybrid rice species and these hybrid rice paddies yield 60 percent of the total rice production in China.[8] Due to Yuan's hard work, China's total rice output rose from 56.9 million tons in 1950 to 194.7 million tons in 2017; about 300 billion kilograms of rice has been produced over the last twenty years, compared to the estimated amount that would have been produced without the hybrid rice species. The annual yield increase is enough to feed 60 million additional people.[9]
The "Super Rice" Yuan worked on improving showed a 30 percent higher yield, compared to common rice, with a record yield of 17,055 kilograms per hectare being registered in Yongsheng County in Yunnan Province in 1999.[9]
In January 2014, Yuan said in an interview that genetically modified food would be the future direction of food and that he had been working on genetic modification of rice.[10]
More here on this important agronomist.
Hybrid rice has since been grown in dozens of countries in Africa, America, and Asia—providing a robust food source in areas with a high risk of famine. For his contributions, Yuan is always called the "Father of Hybrid Rice" by the Chinese media.[2][3] On May 22, Yuan Longping died of multiple organ failure.[1]
Yuan was born in Beijing in 1930. [4]His ancestral home is in De'an County, Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province. During the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War, he moved with his family and attended school in many places, including Hunan, Chongqing, Hankou and Nanjing.
He graduated from Southwest Agricultural College (now part of Southwest University) in 1953 and began his teaching career at an agriculture school in Anjiang, Hunan Province. He married one of his students, Deng Ze (邓则) in 1964,[5][6] they have two children, Yuan Ding'an (袁定安) and Yuan Dingjiang (袁定江).[7]
He came up with an idea for hybridizing rice in the 1960s when a series of harmful political policies (such as the Great Leap Forward) had plunged China into an unprecedented famine that caused the deaths of millions of Chinese citizens.
Since then, Yuan had devoted himself to the research and development of a better rice breed. In 1964, he happened to find a natural rice plant for use in his hybridization experiments that had obvious advantages over other species. Greatly encouraged, he began to study the elements of this particular breed.
The biggest problem by then was having no known method to reproduce hybrid rice in mass quantities, and that was the problem that Yuan set out to solve. In 1964, Yuan created his theory of using a hypothetical naturally-mutated male-sterile strain of rice that he predicted most probably existed for the creation of a new reproductive hybrid rice species, and in two years' time he managed to successfully find a few individuals of such a mutated male-sterile rice that he could use for his research. Subsequent experiments proved his original theory feasible, making that theory his most important contribution to hybrid rice.
Yuan went on to solve more problems than followed from the first. The first experimental hybrid rice species that were cultivated didn't show any significant advantage over commonly grown species, so Yuan suggested crossbreeding rice with a more distant relative: the wild rice. In 1970, he found a particularly important species of wild rice that he ended up using for the creation of a high-yield hybrid rice species.[citation needed] In 1973, in cooperation with others, he was finally able to establish a complete process for creating and reproducing this high-yield hybrid rice species.
The next year they successfully cultivated a hybrid rice species which had great advantages over conventionally grown rice. It yielded 20 percent more per unit than that of common rice breeds, putting China in the lead worldwide in rice production. For this achievement, Yuan Longping was dubbed the "Father of Hybrid Rice."[8]
At present, as much as 50 percent of China's total number of rice paddies grow Yuan Longping's hybrid rice species and these hybrid rice paddies yield 60 percent of the total rice production in China.[8] Due to Yuan's hard work, China's total rice output rose from 56.9 million tons in 1950 to 194.7 million tons in 2017; about 300 billion kilograms of rice has been produced over the last twenty years, compared to the estimated amount that would have been produced without the hybrid rice species. The annual yield increase is enough to feed 60 million additional people.[9]
The "Super Rice" Yuan worked on improving showed a 30 percent higher yield, compared to common rice, with a record yield of 17,055 kilograms per hectare being registered in Yongsheng County in Yunnan Province in 1999.[9]
In January 2014, Yuan said in an interview that genetically modified food would be the future direction of food and that he had been working on genetic modification of rice.[10]
More here on this important agronomist.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.