‘Father of hybrid rice’ makes vital breakthrough

THE third-generation hybrid rice developed by Yuan Longping, the “father of hybrid rice,” and his team was collected and tested over the past two days and showed a major breakthrough in output.

The final yield came to 1,046.3 kilograms per mu (about 0.07 hectares), based on two plots of land in Qingzhu Village under the city of Hengyang in central China’s Hunan Province.

Experts agreed that the rice has a stout stem, fertilizer tolerance, lodging resistance, large spike and more grains.

“One of the most important characteristics of the thirdgeneration hybrid rice is that it has a shorter growing period,” said Qian Qian, deputy director of the China National Rice Research Institute.

Qian said that some previous high-yielding hybrid rice varieties in China took 160 to even 180 days from sowing to harvesting.

That figure was shortened to around 125 days for the new variety.

“A shorter growth period can reduce the use of pesticides and fertilizers, save resource costs and improve production efficiency,” Qian said.

Unlike the previous two generations of hybrid rice which required a large amount of water and fertilizers as well as demanding growing conditions and technological support, the third-generation of hybrid rice is easier to be cultivated by ordinary farmers.

The soil, altitude and climate of the test site were not “ideal conditions” carefully selected beforehand but were close to the paddies of ordinary farmers, according to Zhao Bingran from Hunan hybrid rice research center.

Yuan, who developed the world’s first hybrid rice in 1974, has set multiple world records in hybrid rice yields over many years.

(Xinhua)