Chinese scientist Yuan Longping, renowned for developing the first hybrid rice strain that pulled countless people out of hunger, died of illness at 91 on Saturday, May 22nd, 2021 Beijing time.
The top rice scientist in China passed away in a hospital in Changsha, capital of Hunan Province, at about 1 p.m. , according to the hospital and other sources.
He has helped China work a great wonder — feeding nearly one-fifth of the world’s population with less than nine percent of the world’s total land. He succeeded in cultivating the world’s first high-yielding hybrid rice strain in 1973, which was later grown on a large scale in China and other countries to substantially raise output.
Yuan has spent over five decades researching and developing hybrid rice, which has reached its third generation. Until early this year, he had been conducting research in a seed breeding base in Hainan.
Data shows the accumulated planting area of hybrid rice has exceeded 16 million hectares in China, or 57 percent of the total planting area of rice, helping feed an extra 80 million people a year.
Its growth area overseas has reached 8 million hectares.
Yuan spent his life researching rice and was a household name in China, known by the nickname “Father of Hybrid Rice.” Worldwide, a fifth of all rice now comes from species created by hybrid rice following Yuan’s breakthrough discoveries, according to the website of the World Food Prize, which he won in 2004.
On Saturday afternoon, large crowds honored the scientist by marching past the hospital in Hunan province where he died, local media reported, calling out phrases such as: “Grandpa Ye, have a good journey!”
It was in the 1970s when Yuan achieved the breakthroughs that would make him a household name. He developed a hybrid strain of rice that recorded an annual yield 20% higher than existing varieties — meaning it could feed an extra 70 million people a year, according to Xinhua.
His work helped transform China from “food deficiency to food security” within three decades, according to the World Food Prize, which was created by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug in 1986 to recognize scientists and others who have improved the quality and availability of food.
Yuan and his team worked with dozens of countries around the world to address issues of food security as well as malnutrition.
Even in his later years, Yuan did not stop doing research. In 2017, working with a Hunan agricultural school, he helped create a strain of low-cadmium indica rice for areas suffering from heavy metal pollution, reducing the amount of cadmium in rice by more than 90%.