an to improve.
In the following three decades, planting of hybrid rice spread so widely that by the early 21st century, almost half of China’s rice production area was planted in hybrid rice. This higher-yielding crop produced food to nourish approximately 70 million more people per year in China alone, helping China solve food shortage challenges successfully and providing additional income to numerous farmers.
Yuan and his colleagues continued their work and developed numerous new strains of “super hybrid rice” that produce almost 10 tons per hectare. With higher yields, farmers increased rice production while simultaneously shifting millions of hectares out of rice and into alternatives such as fishponds, vegetables, fruits and other food and fiber crops to provide a more balanced diet and higher standard of living to rural Chinese families. China was able to establish its own hybrid seed industry, which today provides additional revenue and training opportunities to thousands of farmers.
The impact of Yuan’s ingenuity has been felt beyond China’s rice industry. Researchers and producers of other crops in China successfully used the two-line breeding system for rice to explore similar systems for hybrid sorghum and rapeseed with increased yields.
Yuan’s new hybrid rice technology not only benefited China, but was also enthusiastically adopted in other countries. Yuan introduced Chinese hybrid rice to the world in 1979 at an international conference sponsored by the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines (IRRI). The following year, IRRI restored its own hybrid rice research. In light of Chinese success, many countries, institutions and commercial companies started their own hybrid rice research. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) made hybrid rice the first choice of its program to increase grain production outside China, and appointed Professor Yuan as the chief consultant.
In 1984, Yuan became the Director-General of China’s National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Center and he became a member or leader of several national committees, conferences and foundations that support agriculture, science and technology in China.
Yuan built a legacy of combating food shortages and hunger. He and his research associates traveled to India, Vietnam, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the United States to provide advice and consultation to rice research personnel. Yuan’s research institute has trained over 3,000 scientists from more than 50 countries. Farmers around the world have benefitted from his techniques as hybrid rice spread throughout Asia, Africa and the Americas.
For his breakthrough achievement in developing the genetic materials and technologies essential for breeding high-yielding hybrid rice varieties, The World Food Prize was awarded to Yuan Longping and Monty Jones, also a rice researcher, in 2004, which was declared the United Nations International Year of Rice.
In addition to the 2004 World Food Prize, Yuan’s honors and awards include China’s State Supreme Science and Technology Award, the 2001 Magsaysay Award, the UN FAO Medal of Honor for Food Security, and the 2004 Wolf Prize in Agriculture. Additionally, in 2007, he was named a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, which is one of the highest honors in American science and engineering. Yuan became the first non-American NAS member from the Chinese agricultural science circle.
Yuan’s pioneering research helped transform China from food deficiency to food security within three decades. His accomplishments and clear vision helped create a more abundant food supply and more stable world. Yuan’s distinguished life’s work has caused many to call him the “Father of Hybrid Rice,” while his continued research has offered even more promise for world food security and adequate nutrition for the world’s poor.