Yuan, Longping, 1931-
袁隆平
father of hybrid rice; China's most famous "farmer"
Yuan Longping -- Father of Hybrid Rice
2001-10-16 10:02:21"I saw rice plants as tall as Chinese sorghum," said Yuan Longping of a dream he once had, "each ear of rice as big as a broom and each grain of rice as huge as a peanut. I could hide in the shadow of the rice crops with a friend." Yuan was just awarded 5-million-yuan State Supreme Science and Technology Prize for his high yield hybrid rice species. This award is viewed as "Chinese Nobel Prize".
Road to Super Hybrid Rice
Born into a poor farmer's family in 1931 and a graduate from the Southwest Agriculture Institute in 1953, Yuan began his teaching career at an agriculture school in Anjiang, Hunan Province.
He came up with an idea for hybridizing rice in the 1960s, when a series of natural disasters and inappropriate policies had plunged China into an unprecedented famine that caused many deaths.
Since then, he has devoted himself to the research and development of a better rice breed.
In 1964, he happened to find a natural hybrid rice plant that had obvious advantages over others. Greatly encouraged, he began to study the elements of this particular type.
In 1973, in cooperation with others, he was able to cultivate a type of hybrid rice species which had great advantages. It yielded 20 percent more per unit than that of common ones.
The next year their research made a breakthrough in seeding. They successfully developed a set of technologies for producing indica (long-grained non-glutinous) rice, putting China in the lead worldwide in rice production. For this achievement, he was dubbed the "Father of Hybrid Rice."
In 1979, their technique for hybrid rice was introduced into the United States, the first case of intellectual property rights transfer in the history of new China.
At present, as much as 50 percent of China's total rice fields grow Yuan Longping¡¯s hybrid rice species, yield 60 percent of the rice production in China. Due to Yuan's hard work, China's total rice output rose from 5.69 billion tons in 1950 to 19.47 billion tons last year, about 300 billion kilograms more have been produced over the last twenty years. The annual yield is enough to feed 60 million people.
The "Super Rice" Yuan is now working on yields are 30 percent higher than those of common rice. A record yield of 17,055 kilograms per hectare was registered in Yongsheng County in Yunnan Province in 1999.
Quality or Quantity Oriented?
The debates among scientists about whether quality or quantity should take priority are frequently heard. In the under-developed world, the output increase is no doubt the primary concern, while people in developed countries prefer a high-quality rice.
Yuan had been asked to switch his major concern from increasing output to improving quality and taste, a task easier to accomplish for him. But Yuan was unswayed. He firmly believed, in developing countries, the output increase outweighs the urgency for a better taste, and that his foremost task was to increase the grain reserve in developing countries.
"First we must have enough food, then comes eating well," he said.
What's more, he explained, high yield does not necessarily mean a low quality. In the past, when the Chinese people were not sufficiently dressed and fed, they looked on high output as their only goal. So they used fertilizers and farm chemicals without limit. This surely led to quality degrading. At present, China has established nine indicators to evaluate the quality of rice, some of which are positively correlated with the output, while others are not. Last year, China planted over 3 million mu of hybrid rice, with an average yield of 650 kilograms per unit. The highest unit output has reached 1,139 kilograms. Due to improvement in quality, six indicators of the rice have met the First-grade level, and the other three the Second-grade. Some people, after trying this rice, said, "It is more tasty than the rice from Thailand."
Yuan is currently working on species meeting the second-grade standards set by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture.
"The rice of this level is more affordable for urban and rural people," Yuan says.
Money and Fame
Longping High-tech, a seed company using his name, started business last May in Shenzhen. In return, Yuan got 5 percent stake or 2.5 million shares worth 2 million yuan.
Yuan's wealth is estimated more than 100 million yuan (US$12 million), making him one of the richest in China. But he cares for nothing more than his research.
"That figure means nothing," he says in a heavy local accent. "I¡¯m satisfied with my life. Too much money means a burden. My mind is on my research only."
But he admits that the listing may help China's hybrid rice in international market and may bring more funds for future projects.
He has, with a donation of 2 million yuan, established Yuan Longping Foundation, which awards merited workers in agricultural research.
Four minor planets and a college in China were named after him, the first time a Chinese scientist's name has become intellectual asset.
"I am afraid of fame," said Yuan, his face lean, wrinkled and sun-burnt, "Too big a fame, too little freedom."
Two Wishes
In late 1960s, rice output was just over 300 kilograms per mu (0.06 hectare), but Yuan had increased that to more than 500.
But Yuan didn¡¯t slow down, working hard on another breed with bigger grains of rice, and a yield of over 800 kilograms per mu.
This project, he said, was on two stages. The first was to achieve 700 kilograms per mu on large scale, which was realized in 1997. That year, Yuan saw the highest 870 kilograms of rice per mu in his experimental field in Hunan. The result was similar in an even larger experiment conducted in 1998.
The second target is to reach an annual yield of over 800 kilograms per mu. He has set the year of 2005 as the deadline for this goal. However, Yuan is confident in hitting that target two years ahead. One reason is an output increase by 7 to 10 percent has been seen in experimental fields; the other being a new planting technique which should bring additional 10 percent increase.
Besides, Yuan has another dream -- introduce this breed to and benefit every nation.
The FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization) 1991 statistics show that 20 percent of the world's rice output came from 10 percent of the world's rice fields that grow hybrid rice.
A famous economist claimed the Yuan¡¯s achievement as a victory over the threat of famine and that Yuan was ushering us into a world with ample food.
Now, over 20 countries have adopted the hybrid rice. The FAO has vowed to be actively involved in spreading the Yuan's high-yield hybrid rice worldwide.
"If the new strain is sown in the rest of the rice fields, the present grain output worldwide can be doubled, a significant solution to the grain shortage," said Yuan.
Yuan worked as the chief consultant for the FAO in 1991, to share his knowledge with workers from other countries. He has gone abroad every year to provide guidance. He also sent scientists to India, Viet Nam, Myanmar and Bangladesh to work as advisors. Between 1981 and 1998, the Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Center under Yuan Longping held 38 training classes with over 100 participants from 15 countries.
With the help of Chinese scientists, the acreage of hybrid rice in Viet Nam and India increased to 200,000 hectares and 150,000 hectares respectively in 1999.
After Work
In spite of a busy schedule for academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, vice-chairman of the Provincial Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Yuan has managed to keep some interests other than working.
In his spare time, he loves reading books and listening to music. Half an hour of reading in bed before sleep is his habit. He is also a good swimmer.
Other hobbies of his include daily motor-cycling and playing violin. He¡¯s an occasional mahjong player too.
From sowing to harvesting, Yuan goes to fields twice daily, covering about 8 kilometers in total distance. Thus his motorbike has become Yuan's essential transportation. "Riding a motorbike was one of my favorite sports in my youth," Yuan smiled. "But now, it¡¯s more for work than for fun."
Yuan picked up the hobby of playing violin from a music lover at college. During the "cultural revolution," classical music was viewed decadent, so he stopped playing and sent his violin away. He now suffers from arthritis and can no longer play violin. However, he still adores violin music.
"When I lose a game in mahjong," Yuan smiled, " I never hesitate to pay the price-- creep through under the table."
Professor Yuan Longping (press release)
http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ipro/pressrelease/011025e-3.htmhttp://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ipro/pressrelease/010703e.htm
Nikkei Asia Prize (press release)
http://rmaf.xorand.com/new/2001html/yuan_longping.html
Yuan Longping
CHINATHE 2001 RAMON MAGSAYSAY AWARDEE FOR GOVERNMENT SERVICE
Rice is Asia's staple food, the delicious grain upon which its civilizations have grown and flourished since earliest times. Over centuries, Asia's farmers toiled to render forests into rice fields and tinkered endlessly to garner from each paddy and stalk just a little more rice. Rising populations in modern times have meant that more rice must be grown on less land, especially in China where people now number over a billion. Yuan Longping, director general of the China National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Center, has confronted this urgent need. His brilliant innovations in hybridization offer hope that, in the years to come, there will always be enough rice.
As a boy during the Japanese War, Yuan followed his father across China to Chongqing, attending one school after another. An eager learner, he earned the nickname "Questioning student." A visit to a horticultural garden awakened in him a love for plants. He studied agriculture in college and, as a young teacher at Anjiang School of Agriculture in Hunan, began his own experiments in crop breeding. Shocked by China's great famine of 1958-1961 and by the impoverished life of rural villagers, Yuan devoted himself to developing higher-yielding rice plants. Thwarted by flawed Soviet theories and by the Cultural Revolution, he persisted despite disappointments and risks. Quietly shifting to sounder genetic models, he began to succeed.
Hybridization held the key to unleashing the power of heterosis-the dramatic growth spurt that follows the crossing of genetically distant parent plants. Yet hybridization on a large scale seemed beyond the reach of plant scientists. By the early 1960s, many had abandoned the search. Yuan carried on, publishing a key scientific paper in 1966. The discovery of a naturally sterile male wild-rice variety in 1970 led to a breakthrough. With the robust support of the Chinese government, Yuan now led a nationwide team of researchers to develop in 1974 the "three-line hybridization system," capable of producing high-yield hybrid seeds on a commercial scale. Able to yield 15-20 percent more rice per hectare than the best non-hybrid varieties of the time, Yuan's new seeds spread rapidly in China.
As a consequence, China's rice production rose by 47.5 percent by the 1990s, even as some five million hectares of erstwhile paddy land was shifted to cash crops such as vegetables, fruits, cotton, and rapeseed. Meanwhile, at his research center in Changsha, Yuan raced to simplify and improve his technique, achieving a higher-yielding two-line system in 1996. Today, half of China's rice land is planted to Yuan's hybrids. At the same time, the business of hybrid seed production is raising incomes across the countryside.
These days Yuan is perfecting what he calls super-hybrid rice, to yield 25-30 percent more than current hybrids. "If this materializes," he says, "we can feed 100 million more people."
Yuan's research center has already trained 350 scientists from twenty-five countries. His hybrid rice technology is raising hopes for food self-sufficiency in Vietnam, India, the Philippines, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and other Asian countries. All of this delights Yuan, who says, "One of my dreams is to make hybrid rice help more people in the world."
Lean and wiry at seventy years and still hard at work, Yuan is a man of simple ways who rides a motorcycle to the fields daily and dresses like a farmer. He has enriched the lives of millions of Chinese villagers, who revere him and call him the Father of Rice. Yuan returns the compliment. "The peasants in our country have a very rich experience in how to grow rice," he says. "I have a lot to learn from them."
In electing Yuan Longping to receive the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the board of trustees recognizes the unique contribution of his research in rice hybridization to food security in Asia
Yuan Longping, China's Most Famous "Farmer"
2001.02.19 21:59:30CHANGSHA, February 19 (Xinhuanet) -- It says every scientist cherishes a childhood dream indicating his or her future success, but for Yuan Longping, dubbed as "father of hybrid rice," the dream is that he cultivates rice as plump as peanuts, and farmers can relax in the cool shadow of big rice plants.
Yuan, 71, won a 5 million yuan State Supreme Science and Technology Award today, known as the Nobel Prize in China, for his outstanding achievements in breeding high-yield hybrid rice, which has substantially increased China's grain output.
Yuan came up with the idea of hybridizing rice for the first time in the world in 1960s. Since then, 50 percent of China's total rice cultivation fields have grown such rice, which added some 300 billion kilograms to the country's grain output.
Furrows grown on his sunburnt face, a slim figure and coiled-up trousers legs would confuse foreign reporters who came to interview the most famous scientist in China, who would rather be called "a farmer."
Indeed, like many Chinese farmers, Yuan in his 70s and has devoted most of his life growing rice in paddyfields, but unlike those farmers, he reaps the seed from experimental fields only for hybridizing rice.
The urbanite-turned-farmer graduated from Southwest Agriculture College in 1953 has his name related to the world's most advanced agricultural technology. Four minor planets, a listed seed company 's and a science college in China were named after him, which were the first time that a Chinese scientist's name is valued for its intellectual assets.
By lending his name to the Longping High-tech, a seed company, Yuan obtained a 5 per cent stake, or 2.5 million shares worth 2 million yuan, in the firm.
However, Yuan said his research requires the lifestyle of a farmer, or rather a migrating farmer, as he has conducted extensive research related to the cultivation of new strains of hybrid rice "Super Hybrid Rice" in some 10 provinces.
In the year 1999, more than 300 billion kilograms of grain were increased from about 240 million hectares of hybrid rice, which signified the success of his research. And this made Yuan firmly believe that China can surely feed her 1.2 billion population with her limited cultivated land.
The "Super Rice" yields are 30 percent higher than those of common rice. The record yield of 17,055 kilograms per hectare was registered in Yongsheng County in Yunnan in 1999.
But even after that achievement Yuan won't take a break. He has a dream, more realistic than that of his young age, that popularizing new strains of grain with higher yields around the world, can eliminate starvation on earth.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has vowed to get involved in the work of spreading the coverage of Yuan's high- yield hybrid rice, which it considers the best way to increase the world's grain output.
The FAO's 1991 statistics show that 20 percent of the world's rice output was yielded from 10 percent of the world's rice fields, which grow hybrid rice.
"If the new strain was sown in the rest of the rice acreage, the present grain output around the world can be more than doubled. This can be a solution to the grain shortage," said the unselfish scientist.In 1980, Yuan went to the United States at the invitation of the International Rice Research Institute to share his knowledge about the cultivation technology of hybrid rice. He was also employed in 1991 as the chief consultant of FAO to bring his research methods to other countries.
With the help of Chinese scientists, the acreage of hybrid rice in Viet Nam and India increased to 200,000 hectares and 150,000 hectares in 1999, respectively.
The rice research costs time to prove its value. At the age of 43, Yuan cultivated the world's first hybrid rice. At that time the country's grain yield was about 4,500 kilogram per hectare.
"The natural disaster and policy miscarriage further deteriorated starvation in China by then," Yuan recalled tearfully.
This is his motivation to stimulate his research. Largely due to his scientific progress, China's total rice output rose from 5. 69 billion tons in 1950 to 19.47 billion tons last year. The growth rate of rice output far exceeded the population growth speed.
Some people estimate Yuan's actual fortune might amount to more than 100 million yuan (12 million U.S. dollars), making him one of the richest people in China. But he doesn't know for sure himself, for he seems not to care about his own assets than the rice harvest.
Some people asked him to move the focus of his research from improving amounts of hybrid rice to the quality and taste, which would be easier to do. But, the stubborn academician insisted that the amount of hybrid rice's per unit yield still outweighs the quality, for his foremost task is to improve the grain reserve in developing countries.
Yuan Longping: "Father of Hybrid Rice"
¡¡¡¡Yuan Longping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, began the research of hybrid rice from the 1960s and successfully cultivated new hybrid rice after 12 years' efforts.
¡¡¡¡The "Second Green Revolution" launched by Yuan brings good news to all mankind, thus he enjoys a good name both at home and the world.
¡¡¡¡From 1976 to 1987, the total cultivated area of the hybrid rice developed by Yuan reached 1.1 billion mu(15mu=1ha), and increased rice yield by 100 billion kg. In 1979, the hybrid rice was transferred as China's first agro-technology patent to the United States.
¡¡¡¡At present, the hybrid rice developed by Yuan is planted in the farmlands all over China, which played an important role in increasing China's grain production.
¡¡¡¡Yuan's hybrid rice has attracted world attention and many foreign experts have come to learn from this technology. Some 20 countries and regions, such as India and Viet Nam, have introduced hybrid rice, hence, Yuan's effort has made great contribution to solving the world's problem of grain shortage.
¡¡¡¡The UN World Intellectual Property Organization granted Yuan a gold medal and conferred upon him an honorable title of "prominent inventor". Yuan's international counterparts call him "Father of the Hybrid Rice".
