Lasting Honor to Yuan Longping the “World Father of Hybrid Rice”

May 22, 2021 was a day of deep mourning for the Chinese nation and the whole world. On this day, China lost its legendary son of the soil – agronomist Professor Yuan Longping, known as the “world father of hybrid rice”. Prof. Yuan who is hailed as a “grand green revolution hero” by the international community has contributed greatly to the food security of China and the world.

The whole world’s tribute to this “supreme Chinese rice scientist” has been truly echoed in the words of Mr. Qu Dongyu, Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on May 22: “Deeply saddened by the death of Prof Yuan Longping, my dear master. He devoted his life to the research of hybrid rice, helping billions achieve food security.” His contribution to China’s food security, innovation in agricultural technology, and world food development will long be remembered and honored not only by Chinese people but the world also.

Yuan helps China to feed its 1.4 billion people

The world has always wondered how China, once held back by extreme poverty, is able to feed its 1.4 billion mouths. The answer lies in the contribution of Yuan who had increased China’s rice grain yields to levels previously thought impossible. Born into a poor farmer’s family on September 7, 1930, in Beijing and a graduate from Chongqing-based Southwest Agriculture Institute in 1953, he became a world-renowned agricultural scientist who revolutionized agriculture in China and many countries around the world by developing the world’s first successful high-yielding hybrid rice strains in the 1970s.

Since his early life, he was pained to see how hunger and instability overwhelmed his country. “I saw heartbreaking scenes of people starving to death on the road before 1949,” Yuan said. In the 1960s, a series of natural disasters and inappropriate policies had devastated China’s agriculture sector and led to mass starvation and the deaths of millions. Since rice is the staple food for over 60 percent of Chinese people, he vowed to “study rice…just to make more people have enough to eat.” Inspired by the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s clarion call for new China to defy the West, he had devoted himself to the research and development of a better rice breed that would help alleviate famine and poverty in China and around the world.

“I saw rice plants as tall as Chinese sorghum,” said Yuan 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.”

A discovery of a natural hybrid rice plant by Yuan in the southern island of Hainan in 1970 became the prelude to China’s decades of hybrid rice research.  His dream transformed into reality when he successfully cultivated a type of hybrid rice species in 1973, in cooperation with other Chinese rice experts.

The next year Yuan had commercially released a hybrid rice variety with 20 percent higher yields than previous varieties, which was named “Nan-you No. 2”. His pioneering discovery of Nan-you No. 2 led to a rise in China’s rice production from 56.9 million tonnes in 1950 to 187.9 million tonnes in 2000, for the first time transforming China from food deficiency to food security within three decades. He and his team under his China National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Center set multiple world records in hybrid rice yields in previous years. His creation of a third-generation rice “Sanyou No 1” achieved record-breaking yields of 1,500 kilograms per mu (about 0.07 hectares) in an experimental field in central China’s Hunan province in November 2020.

Today, the annual planting area of hybrid rice in China has exceeded 240 million mu, with the increased annual production feeding an extra 80 million people. China has succeeded in feeding one fifth of the world’s population with less than 9 percent of world arable land, enabling the Chinese people to hold their rice bowl firmly in their own hands. This wouldn’t have been possible without Yuan’s strenuous effort.

China’s hybrid rice helps to combat the world’s food insecurity

Yuan cherished a dream to introduce his hybrid rice technology to every nation to save the world from starvation. His technique for growing hybrid rice has been enthusiastically adopted throughout Asia, Africa and the Americas to eliminate poverty, hunger and malnutrition. His research has helped other rice-producing countries around the globe to achieve precious food security and poverty alleviation. While honouring him with the prestigious World Food Prize in 2004 for his high yield hybrid rice species, the World Food Prize Foundation noted in the citation that “he and his research associates traveled to India, Vietnam, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the United States to provide advice and consultation to rice research personnel” and trained over 14,000 professional personnel in hybrid rice for more than 80 developing countries through international training courses.

It should be noted here that China has shared the hybrid rice technology abroad with an open heart and a responsible attitude, a process in tandem with China’s opening-up. It can be seen as a historical note that Yuan’s technique for hybrid rice was transferred to the United States in the year 1979, the first ever Chinese intellectual property granted to America. It was done at a time when America’s successive leaderships spout the lie that China steals everything and cannot innovate.

Honors and awards to the famine fighter

Prof. Yuan’s contributions have won him numerous awards and honors. He won the World Food Prize in 2004 for his contribution to food security. He was awarded the 5-million-yuan State Supreme Science and Technology Prize in 2000 which is touted as the “Chinese Nobel Prize”. In 2018, he shared the Future Science Prize of China with two other scientists Zhang Qifa and Li Jiayang for their pioneering work in breeding new rice varieties with high yield and superior quality. On September 29, 2019, he was awarded the Medal of the Republic, China’s highest official honor, by President Xi Jinping. He carried the Olympic Torch in 2008 as it passed through Hunan province en route to Beijing.

Cherishing Yuan’s precious legacy

Prof. Yuan and many other Chinese scientists’ work on hybrid rice production technology have transformed China into a grain surplus country now. His contributions to the development of hybrid rice are the greatest gifts to humanity. China and the whole world mourned the passing of the “father of hybrid rice” who saved millions of people from hunger.  His life is one of devotion not just to China, but the whole world. The whole world should cherish Yuan’s legacy and carry on his dream so that the challenges of famine, hunger and poverty will be banished from the earth forever. Echoing the song of great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore in a bit changed version, it can be said that Prof. Yuan will remain in utter silence in people’s hearts like the full moon in the summer night as inspiration and will fill the entire world with pride with his irreplaceable contribution.