Chapter 86 85. Yuan Longping - Food Security and People's Livelihood Guarantee

Yuan Longping, male, Han nationality, from De'an County, Jiangxi Province, without party affiliation. Born in 1930, he is currently the director of the National Hybrid Rice Engineering Technology Center and Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Center, and the vice chairman of the Hunan Provincial Political Consultative Conference.Famous agricultural scientist. In 1960, Yuan Longping learned from some academic journals that hybrid sorghum, hybrid corn, and seedless watermelon had been widely used in domestic and foreign production.This made Yuan Longping realize that the laws of gene segregation, free assortment and chain exchange proposed by geneticists Mendel, Morgan and their followers are of great significance to crop breeding.Therefore, Yuan Longping jumped out of the circle of asexual hybridization theory and began to conduct experiments on sexual hybridization of rice.

In July 1960, he discovered a distinctive rice plant in the experimental field of early rice varieties.In the spring of the second year, he sowed the seeds of this mutant strain in the experimental field, and the results proved that the "outstanding" rice plant discovered last year was an out-and-out "natural hybrid rice".He thought: Since "natural hybrid rice" exists objectively in nature, as long as we can explore the laws and mysteries of it, we will be able to cultivate artificial hybrid rice according to our requirements, so as to take advantage of its hybrid advantage and increase the yield of rice.In this way, Yuan Longping broke through the shackles of the traditional concept that rice is a self-pollinating plant without heterosis from practice and reasoning.Therefore, Yuan Longping immediately turned his energy to the new topic of cultivating artificial hybrid rice.

In the late 1990s, American scholar Brown put forward the "China Threat Theory". He wrote that by the 21st century, China's population will reach 1.6 billion. Who will feed China by then, and who will save the resulting global food shortage? and turbulent crisis?At this time, Yuan Longping announced to the world: "China can completely solve its own food problem, and China can also help the people of the world to solve the food problem."In fact, Yuan Longping had already had this concern.As early as 1986, in his paper "Breeding Strategy of Hybrid Rice", he proposed that the breeding of hybrid rice should be divided into three development stages: three-line method, two-line method and one-line method in terms of breeding methods. It is developing in the direction from complex to simple and with higher and higher efficiency; from the level of heterosis utilization, it can be divided into three development stages: inter-species, inter-subspecies and distant heterosis utilization. strong direction.According to this assumption, every new stage of hybrid rice is a new breakthrough, which will push the rice yield to a higher level. In August 1995, Yuan Longping solemnly announced that after 9 years of research on two-line hybrid rice in my country, a breakthrough has been made, which can be widely promoted in production.Just as Yuan Longping envisioned in his breeding strategy, the two-line hybrid rice did show better yield-increasing effects, generally increasing the yield by 750-1,500 kg per hectare than the three-line hybrid rice in the same period, and the rice quality was greatly improved.So far, in the production demonstration, more than 18 million mu of two-line hybrid rice has been planted nationwide.

In August 1998, Yuan Longping launched an attack to a new commanding height.He proposed to Premier Zhu the research topic of breeding super hybrid rice.Premier Zhu was very happy after hearing the news, and immediately allocated 10 million yuan to support it.Yuan Longping was greatly encouraged by this.At the Sanya farm base in Hainan, Yuan Longping led a team of cooperative researchers from more than ten provinces and districts across the country to overcome the difficulties of the two-line method hybrid rice by fighting day and night.After nearly a year of hard work, the super hybrid rice has been successfully planted in a small area. The actual measurement results of the super hybrid rice late rice in the 48-mu experimental field show that the rice seed setting rate is over 95%, and the thousand-grain weight of rice is 27%. More than 847 kilograms per mu.This shows that the "father of hybrid rice" Yuan Longping has made "four major breakthroughs": the current super hybrid rice has a high yield per mu of late rice; the rice has a high seed setting rate; the rice has a high thousand-grain weight; .The experts and technical personnel present were overjoyed at the new success of this outstanding scientist.This marks that China's super hybrid rice breeding research has once again surpassed itself and continues to lead the world.At present, super hybrid rice is moving towards large-scale trial planting and promotion.

Over the past 20 years, my country has promoted the cultivation of more than 5.6 billion mu of hybrid rice, and the annual increase in rice production can feed more than 70 million people, which is equivalent to the total number of newborns in the world every year.Hybrid rice has also been promoted to more than 30 countries and regions, with a planting area of ​​more than 30 million mu. Therefore, he is known as the "father of hybrid rice" at home and abroad.He is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, was awarded honorary titles such as the National Model Worker, was rated as a National Moral Model, and won the National Special Invention Award, the National Highest Science and Technology Award, the UNESCO Science Award, and the Food and Agriculture Organization Food Security Award.