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'Father of hybrid rice should be Nobel Prize nominee'

By Li Qian (Chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-11-24 17:50

A netizen posting onwww.rednet.cnsaid Yuan Longping, the inventor of hybrid rice that has helped feed tens of millions, should be a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, an opinion that was supported by many others.

Posting under the name 'Tian Nan Di Bei' on November 14 the netizen argued that since the Nobel Peace Prize is for those devoted to eliminating conflict, narrowing disparities, and creating a peaceful environment for the development of humanity and Yuan's numerous contributions to the world in crop enhancement are examples of this ethos, that he should be nominated.

'Reducing poverty and hunger is the best way to achieve peace,' Tian Nan Di Bei wrote.

Yuan Longping (L) eats rice as a farmer works on the field in this undated photo released by the Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Centre.

Yuan, dubbed the 'father of hybrid rice', is an eminent agricultural researcher and was the first in the world to discover that hybrid rice yields a larger harvest, better resists disease and grows faster than non-hybrid rice.

This discovery helped solve China's food shortage of the 1960s and 1970s, and answered the question of the world in the late 1990s when some western politicians and scholars were worried that China's large population would trigger a worldwide famine, according to a Xinhuah report published on February 18, 2005.

Yuan began his research on hybrid rice in the 1960s, and achieved a major scientific breakthrough when he successfully developed the genetic materials essential for breeding high-yielding hybrid rice varieties in 1973.

He and his team produced a commercial hybrid rice variety based on his 'three-line system' hybrid rice theory in 1974, and gave it to nearly half of the rice production area in China.

Rice production in China increased by 500 billion kilograms using Yuan's growing techniques. The annual increase in production was enough to feed 60 million people for one year.

In 1979, the hybrid rice technique became the first Chinese technical patent in agriculture that was exported to the US.

On November 24, 2006, Yuan released a new variety of 'super rice' at a news conference in Hunan Province, which could yield a record 800 kilograms every mu (one fifteenth of a hectare).

Yuan Longping (R) examines seedlings of hybrid rice with a colleague in a laboratory in this undated photo. [Chinataiwan.org]

'Tian Nan Di Bei' wrote that Norman Borlaug, Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 1970, was also an agriculturist, who developed and spread a variety of high-yield wheat to third world countries.

His proposal was supported by a great number of netizens. 'Johnson1993' wrote that he was born in the countryside, and has seen with his own eyes the great contribution Yuan has made to the nation.

'Rice production on every mu increased from only 300 kilograms to 500 or 600 kilograms once the hybrid rice was used,' he said.

'Tian Zi Men Sheng' said he always considered Yuan the greatest person of the 20th century.

Now Yuan's techniques have spread to more than twenty countries and proved greatly helpful in fighting hunger throughout the world.

Yuan was elected a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Science in the US. In fact, he has acquired nearly every major award in his field throughout the world, except the Nobel Prize.