Yuan Longping wants to share technology with other countries
It’s not often that one person can be said to be responsible for feeding 60 million people. But then Yuan Longping has never been an ordinary person. Yuan, 74, a Chinese agricultural scientist, is widely acknowledged as having discovered the genetic basis of heterosis in rice – a breakthrough that helped lead to the development of hybrid rice.
In the three decades that followed the discovery, hybrid rice has spread so that it is now planted on about half of China’ rice area, resulting in a 20 percent higher yield over previously grown varieties. That 20 percent increase translates into enough food to feed an additional 60 million people per year in China, according to scientists with the Hunan Academy of Agricultural Sciences where Yuan serves as a research professor and mentor to a number of other agricultural scientists.
For that and other accomplishments, including helping establish the hybrid rice seed production industry in China, Yuan was recently named recipient of the 2004 World Food Price.
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