China's 'father of hybrid rice' sets new world records

A Chinese agricultural scientist, known as the "father of hybrid rice", has made a series of new world records by achieving an unprecedented produce, officials announced today.
Yuan Longping's team have managed 42 hybrid rice test fields in 16 provincial regions across China, including Yunan, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Guangdong, Chongqing and Hunan since the beginning of the year, Hunan provincial government said.
A new world record in output of double-cropping rice was set in south China's Guangdong, which achieved an annual yield of 1,537.78 kilogrammes of rice per mu (about 0.07 hectares) of farmland, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
In two other projects in Hebei and Yunan, the crops have yielded as much as 1,082.1 kilogrammes per mu and 1,088 kilogrammes of rice per mu.

Both have broken previous world records for the highest yield in high-latitude areas as well as output on 100 mu of farmland, it said.
Other projects in Shandong, Hubei and Guangxi all broke previous regional records in China.

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.
Yuan, who developed the world's first hybrid rice in 1974, has also set three world records in hybrid rice yield in 1999, 2005 and 2011.
"Super rice has a bright future in raising grain production. China has solved the problem of food shortages on our own, people in other countries are also benefiting. Super rice will play a larger role in food security and world peace in the future," Yuan said adding that his team is working on a new generation of hybrid rice, which is expected to breed rice of higher yields and better quality.

In 2013 Yuan criticised an Indian farmer Sumant Kumar who beat his world record by harvesting 22.4 tonnes per hector saying it as "fake."
It is "120 per cent fake",Yuan said afterKumar's success story published by the British newspaper The Guardian which carried a feature on the achievement of young farmer from Nalanda district of Bihar in 2012 by using a method called System ofRiceIntensification (SRI).