On May 22, China's "father of hybrid rice" Yuan Longping died at 91. People in China and around the world felt1. Yuan was devoted to creating hybrid rice, which 2hunger of millions of people not only in China, but around the world.
3Yuan's graduation in college, he worked as a teacher at an agriculture school in Hunan. After seeing many people die of hunger during a serious famine(饥荒) that lasted from 1959 to 1961,he felt 4it. Then he decided to study hybrid rice 5. Back then, people thought 6 couldn't be crossed with other plants. But Yuan didn't believe this and 7 face the challenge. In 1973, he succeeded in growing the world's first high-yield of over 500 kg per mu, 8 than the 300-kg yields from normal rice. In 2020, hybrid rice developed by Yuan's team achieved a yield of 22. 5 tons per hectare in two growing seasons. Later, his 9 also started to research growing salt-tolerant rice, which is known as seawater rice.
Yuan once said he had two 10. One was to enjoy the shade under rice crops that were taller than men. The other was that hybrid rice would be grown all over the world. One day his dreams might come true!
