In October 1980, Yuan (third from left) shows the trainees of the International Hybrid Rice Breeding Training Class around the rice field in Hunan Academy of Agricultural Sciences. [Photo by Wang Ping] 

October 16, 2022 was the 42nd World Food Day and the 77th anniversary of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). At this moment, we miss Yuan Longping even more. Yuan was the "Father of Hybrid Rice." His hybrid rice not only helps China to solve the food shortage problem, but also made outstanding contributions to the world's fight against hunger.

'Let no ordinary people starve'

In the 1950s, China suffered from national food shortage and called on everyone to "march toward science and technology" to solve the food and clothing problem. Yuan, a teacher at the Anjiang Agricultural School in central China's Hunan Province, vowed to help cultivate the first generation of agricultural college students in China so as to meet the need of the government for agricultural development.

In 1961, Yuan discovered a rice plant with 230 grains in a rice field. Later, he concluded that it was a natural hybrid rice plant and that the research and development of hybrid rice technology was an important way to increase rice yield. Thus, the idea of cultivating hybrid rice came across his mind.

He put forward the idea of "taking advantage of the male sterility of rice first, so as to take advantage of the heterosis of rice" upon research, and designed a complete set of hybrid rice breeding programs, that is, cultivating sterile lines, maintainer lines and restorer lines, and then completing the parent propagation and seed production of hybrid rice through the matching of the "three lines."