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An eminent Chinese agronomist and father of hybrid rice, Prof.
Yuan Longping, urges the government Thursday to spend more on
projects to increase per-hectare yield and protect the country's
shrinking farmland resources so as to ensure food safety.
Prof. Yuan, a noted academician of the Chinese Academy of
Engineering, said China's grain output continued to drop in the
fifth consecutive year in 2003 to about 430 million tons from a
record of approximately 520 million tons for 1998.
Yuan, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People'
s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) that is in its second
plenary session, said governments at all levels should increase
input in research programs to increase per-hectare yield, and
provide more direct subsidies to grain growers in a bid to fill
them with zeal to produce more cereals.
Yuan, who is currently in Beijing for the on-going CPPCC
session, said he would go on working hard and consistently on his
super-hybrid rice project.
Hybrid rice, which has been introduced to more than half of the
rice acreage in China, makes up over 60 percent of its total rice
output since it was developed by the prestigious agronomist Yuan
Longping in the 1970s.
Partly thanks to the spread of hybrid rice strains, Chinese
farmers are able to maintain rice production for food safety, while
several million hectares of paddies have been released for growing
other crops to raise farmers' incomes.
Meanwhile, China has, since the early 1990s, sent veteran rice
specialists to Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Vietnam and
other south and southeast Asian nations to impart hybrid rice
nursing, cultivating and other related technologies.
(China Daily March 5, 2004)
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