Rice super-strain could yield vast bounty
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2004-11-09 23:06

Yuan Longping, China's "Father of Hybrid Rice," predicts his latest super-strain with augmented yields will be widely planted in 2006.

Yuan, in his 70s, made the remarks on Monday at a celebration held in Central China's Hunan in honour of the scientist's winning the World Food Prize in October for his outstanding work on hybrid rice.

With an experimental production capacity of 12 tons per hectare, the second-phase super-strain is expected to be promoted on a large scale in 2006, Yuan said.

If the strain is sown over 6.67 million hectares, with a conservative production of 9.75 tons per hectare, China will harvest 15 billion more kilograms of rice, enough to feed 30 million additional people, Yuan said.

So far, hybrid rice covers 14 million hectares, nearly half of China's 27 million hectares of paddies.

The first-phase, super-strain variety, with an experimental production capacity of 10.5 tons per hectare, was sown on just a million hectares this year.

A third-phase super-strain is also being developed with an experimental production capacity of 13.5 tons per hectare.

"We will try our best to work out the third-phase super strain by 2010," said Yuan.

"The cultivation of super hybrid rice is an effective way to provide enough food for Chinese, who make up a fifth of the world's population. However, it still takes time to turn experimental data into grain in farmers' barns," said Huang Peijin, a prominent Chinese agronomist.

Yuan developed the world's first hybrid rice variety in 1974, increasing rice output by 15 to 20 per cent.

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