ate.
Jones continued to show leadership and innovation in taking NERICA rice to farmers in Africa’s villages. He built partnerships with the West Africa Rice Development Agency and policy makers, non-governmental organizations, and research and extension services. He outlined a plan for community-based, participatory, and gender-sensitive programs that would both rapidly disseminate the seeds and allow rice farmers – a majority being women – an active role in planting and evaluating the hybrids and continuing outreach in rural areas.
For his breakthrough achievements in creating a rice variety specifically bred for the ecological and agricultural conditions in Africa, Jones won The World Food Prize jointly with Yuan Longping of China, also a rice researcher, in 2004 – which was declared the United Nations International Year of Rice. With his World Food Prize monetary award, Jones continued to support and invest in the extension of programs such as those in Sierra Leone and the rest of Africa.
Jones’ work led to the rapid development of more than 3,000 NERICA lines. As demonstrated in pilot projects undertaken in Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria and Togo, NERICA benefited 20 million rice farmers and 240 million consumers in West Africa alone, in addition to other parts of Africa and the world. In the early 21st century, NERICA resulted in over 30 percent expansion in upland rice cultivation in Nigeria, and Guinea’s rice imports were reduced by 50 percent in three years, allowing the country to become a net exporter of rice in 2005.
In 2002, Jones was appointed the executive secretary of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), based in Ghana. At FARA, he oversaw advocacy and coordination efforts in support of regional research, with the goal of increasing agricultural growth by at least six percent annually by 2020 as well as fostering ongoing economic growth, alleviating poverty and improving food security for Africa’s people. In 2007, Time magazine named Jones as one of the world’s most influential people. In 2013, Jones was appointed Special Adviser to the President and Ambassador at Large for the Republic of Sierra Leone.
According to the Africa Rice Center’s Director-General, Papa Abdoulaye Seck, “Dr. Monty Jones has demonstrated by his remarkable contribution that is it possible to reshape the agricultural map of our continent through the African creative genius.”
Born in Beijing in 1930, Yuan Longping graduated from Southwest Agricultural College in Chongqing, China, in 1953 with a major in agronomy. Upon graduation, he accepted a teaching job at the Hunan Agricultural University in Anjiang, China.
In the 1950s and ‘60s, classical genetics concluded that heterosis - a phenomenon in which the progeny of two distinctly different parents grow faster, yield more, and resist stress better than either parent – was not possible in self-pollinated crops such as rice. Thus it did not seem possible to produce high-yielding hybrid seeds in rice as had been done in other crops.
Nevertheless, Yuan believed that heterosis is a universal phenomenon and rice is no exception. In his off hours, he conducted scientific experiments involving asexual crosses between crops; he concluded that there were faults in the accepted breeding approach.
After nine years of research, Yuan published his findings in 1964, outlining unique genetic tools, which were essential for developing the first-ever hybrid rice. Yuan continued his research, moving in 1971 to Hunan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, where he served as a research professor.
In 1973, Yuan successfully developed the first hybrid rice combination called Nan-you No. 2 which, due to heterosis, boasted yields 20 percent higher than previous varieties. By 1975, Yuan and his colleagues had summarized a complete set of seed production technologies, and the large-scale production of hybrid rice began. The following year, in 1976, Nan-you No. 2 was put into commercial production. With this new rice variety and improved techniques, food availability in China beg