China's 'father of hybrid rice' sets new record in rice output

A Chinese agricultural scientist, known as the "father of hybrid rice", has set a new world record in super hybrid output by achieving an annual yield of over 1,149 kgs per 0.07 hectares, a media report said today.
The record was set in north China's Hebei province by Yuan Longping who has been nominated to attend the once-in-a- five-year Congress of the ruling Communist Party of China, (CPC) to be held here tomorrow.
Since the beginning of 2016, Yuan's team has managed 42 hybrid rice test fields in 16 provincial regions across China, including Yunnan, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Guangdong, Chongqing and Hunan.

The new world record was set in the test fields in Hebei, which achieved an annual yield of 1,149.02 kgs of rice per mu (about 0.07 hectares) of farmland, state run Xinhua news agency reported.
Yuan, who developed the world's first hybrid rice in 1974, has set multiple world records in hybrid rice yield in 1999, 2005 and 2011.
Hybrid rice, also known as super rice in China, is produced by crossbreeding different kinds of rice

About 65 per cent of Chinese depend on rice as a staple food.
In 2013 Yuan had criticised Indian farmer Sumant Kumar who beat his world record by harvesting 22.4 tonnes per hector terming the achievement as "fake."

It is "120 per cent fake", Yuan had said after the success story of Kumar, a farmer from Bihar's Nalanda district, was published in the international media.