Yuan Longping: please stop throwing dirty water on super rice

Recently, there have been questions about super rice in the media, and some online comments have even targeted Chinese hybrid rice research and myself. I have something to say about this.

First of all, super rice is a major project proposed and established by the state to ensure the food needs of the people of the whole country. In reality, rice is the largest food crop in both China and the world. More than half of the world's population and more than 60% of China's population live on rice. Especially in China, where there are more people and less land, we can only solve the food problem by increasing the yield per unit area of cultivated land. There is no doubt about this development direction. It is out of consideration of food security that the Ministry of Agriculture officially established the breeding program of "China Super Rice" in 1996. At present, super rice varieties have evolved to the fourth stage, and the overall situation is improving. As researchers, we have been pursuing higher yield of super rice, which is the eternal theme of our hybrid rice research work.

During this time I was inspecting super rice demonstration films in Changsha, Hunan Province. At present, China has a total of 39 super rice 100 mu demonstration pieces, and now some demonstration pieces have been harvested. According to my calculation, about 5 demonstration pieces yield more than 1000 kg per mu, and the average yield is also about 950 kg. In order to fully understand the development level of super rice in China, we can make a simple comparison: at present, the rice planting area in the world is about 2.2 billion mu, and the average yield is 300 kg. Even in some countries with relatively developed agricultural science and technology such as Japan, the average yield is only 450 kg. From this alone, we can see how much advantage the development of super rice brings to China's agricultural production.

Of course, recent doubts have also exposed some problems with super rice itself. In this regard, I would like to point out that super rice has never been perfect, and it has always been in the process of improvement. In the 1980s and 1990s, our super rice had high yield but poor quality, but the main goal at that time was to solve the problem of food and clothing, and the common people's requirements for rice were not so high. However, as people's living standards become higher and higher, people's requirements for quality of life become higher and higher. For this reason, we are constantly improving super rice. My aim is to achieve both high output and high quality. I will never pursue quality at the expense of output. Now, this goal has been achieved. According to the standards of the Ministry of Agriculture, rice produced from super rice has reached the second grade and above.

Even so, super rice still has some technical problems to be solved, such as its resistance to diseases and insect pests, especially rice blast, is not ideal. According to the nine-grade evaluation index of the Ministry of Agriculture, the resistance of super rice to diseases and insect pests is at the middle level of grade 5. We hope that super rice in the future will at least reach the second or third grade, that is, high resistance level. I understand the high expectations of society for our agricultural scientific research, but agricultural scientific research and production can never be accomplished overnight. The growth and improvement cycle of super-grade rice is very long. It takes at least three years and five years. Even if you work overtime at night, you can't solve the problem so quickly.

I am now in my 80s and have experienced both the bitter days of hunger in the 1960s and the good days of plenty. Some of the doubts about super rice and even about me were well-intentioned, but some were malicious. What I want to say is that super rice research is related to national honor and food security. No matter what difficulties I encounter, I will never back down. Now our scientific research team is working towards the fifth phase of super rice, towards higher yield and higher quality. I hope some people in society will stop throwing dirty water on our super rice. (The author is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and an expert in hybrid rice)