FEEDING A BILLION PEOPLE:

LOOKING BACK AND

MOVING FORWARD
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By YUAN LONGPING
2001 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Government Service
Presented at the 43rd Ramon Magsaysay Awards Lecture Series
30 August 2001, Manila, Philippines

Since 1960s, I have been a rice breeder and devoted myself to the cause of
developing hybrid rice for 40 years.
In 1961, I happened to discover a natural rice hybrid plant, which showed a
very good heterosis with big panicles, heavy grains and strong stems and
theoretically could yield 50% higher than common rice varieties. This
discovery inspired any strong interest in developing hybrid rice. Because I
know the utilization of heterosis is an effective and economic way to increase
crop yield by a wide margin. The famous example then was the high-yielding
hybrid corn which had been planted worldwide for years.
I made up my mind to develop hybrid rice in 1964. There are a number of
technical difficulties involved in utilization of rice heterosis.
The first and most important one is how to get a large amount of hybrid seeds.
Because only F1 hybrid (the first filial generation after hybridization) has
heterosis, it is necessary to produce F1 hybrid seeds every year. However, rice
is a self-pollinated crop with tiny florets and one floret bears one seed only.
Obviously it is impossible to produce a great quantity of F1 hybrid seeds by
hand emasculation and pollination.

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The best way to solve this problem is to breed a special rice line called male
sterile line, which has no functional pollens but normal pistils. By means of
such an MS line as a genetic tool, a large amount of F1 hybrid seeds could be
produced through supplementary pollination in a seed production plot where
the MS line is planted alternately in rows with a normal rice variety to supply
pollens.
After 6 years of hard work, there was no significant progress in breeding of
MS line. Chance favors the prepared mine, fortunately, in the course of
collection of wild rice resources, we found a male sterile wild rice plant in
1970. This discovery resulted in a breakthrough in breeding of hybrid rice
because by using this male sterile wild rice, many excellent MS lines were
successfully developed soon in 1973. In the next year, several pioneer hybrid
varieties with remarkable heterosis in high yield potential were selected. In
1976, the hybrid rice was released for commercial production. Since then the
acreage under hybrid rice has increased rapidly year after year. At present,
there are about 15.5 million ha of hybrid rice covering 50% of the total rice
area in China.
It has been proven for many years that hybrid rice has 20% yield of advantage
over conventional inbred varieties. For example, the average yield of hybrid
rice was 7 t/ha while that of the conventional rice was 5.6 t/ha in 2000. The
cumulative yield increase due to planting hybrid rice from 1976 to 2000 is
nearly 350 million tons. It is indicated that the development of hybrid rice is of
strategic significance in enhancing food production.
Although great achievements have been made in development of hybrid rice,
from a strategic point of view, the existing hybrid rice is still in its juvenile
stage, since the high yield potential in rice has not been fully tapped yet. Hybrid
rice possesses a brilliant future.
In order to further increase the yield of hybrid rice, we are now focusing our
efforts on developing super hybrid rice, which can outyield the existing hybrid
rice by 20-30%. Up to now, great progress has been attained in breeding of
super hybrid rice.

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There have been two pioneer super hybrid varieties with very high yield
developed recently as shown in the following tables:
1. 64S/E32
Total Area

Average Yield

Maximum Yield

1998

2.25 ha

12.02 t/ha

17.07 t/ha

1999

24 ha

11.1 t/ha

15.1 t/ha

Total Area

Average Yield

Maximum Yield

1998

86 ha

10.79 t/ha

1999

35,3330 ha

10.2 t/ha

14.8 t/ha

2000

233,500 ha

9.6 t/ha

15.1 t/ha

2. 64S/9311

Because of very high yield potential as well as good grain quality, the
expansion of these super hybrids is very fast. Their planting area reaches 1.5
million ha this year in China.
It is expected that the yearly planting area of super hybrid rice will reach 10
million ha. by 2005 with a yield advantage of more than two tons per ha over
the existing hybrids. This means that 20 million tons of more rice will be
harvested annually which can feed 50 million more people.
There is no limit to the development of science. Rice yield can be constantly
lifted to a new high level with the application and progress of breeding science.

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Copyright!!2016!Ramon!Magsaysay!Award!Foundation!
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Based on recent progress, we put forward the goal of breeding super hybrid
rice in the next 5 years (2001-2005) as follows:
Yield potential

: 15 t/ha

Yield on commercial scale

: 12 t/ha

Maximum yield in experiment field

: 18 t/ha

In a word, I have a strong faith in that the Chinese not only can feed themselves
by their own effort with the progress of science and advanced technology but
also help other developing countries to solve their food problems.

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Copyright!!2016!Ramon!Magsaysay!Award!Foundation!
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