For most Chinese people, rice is just an important part of almost every meal. 1for Yuan
Longping, rice was more than that. It was his life-long career(事业)。
Yuan, known as China's "Father of Hybrid Rice(杂交水稻之父)", created hybrid rice that helps2 the world. On May 22, Yuan died at 91. 3around the world were sad to hear of his passing.
In the 1960s, people in China didn't have 4 food to eat. Many people even died because of this. Yuan was5to see this. He decided to work on a kind of hybrid rice. He thought this rice could feed more people.
At the time, other scientists didn't think hybrid rice was6. But Yuan wanted to try anyway. He spent four years7 wild rice that could be crossed(杂交)with other plants. In 1964, he found it!
In 1973, he grew the world's first hybrid rice strain(品种). It could reach a yield of over 500 kg per mu, 8than the 300 kg yields of other kinds of rice. Farmers can grow it on many different kinds of land. It can fight bad 9and disease, too.
This kind of hybrid rice has been grown all over the 10 since then. It has helped China feed nearly one-fifth of the world's population with only about 7 percent of the world's farmland.
