Yuan Longping: Super Rice is not transgenic Technology

On December 14, Yuan Longping spoke at the Sanya Financial and Economic International Forum. (photo by Sha Xiaofeng, reporter of Sanya News Network)

On December 14, Yuan Longping, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of the National Hybrid Rice Engineering and Technology Research Center, spoke at the Sanya Financial and Economic International Forum. (photo by Sha Xiaofeng, reporter of Sanya News Network)

Yuan Longping: Super Rice is not transgenic Technology Yuan Longping said in response to the concern of the audience-- "Super rice is not transgenic technology."

Yuan Longping, China's "father of hybrid rice" who attended the Sanya Financial and Economic International Forum, said in a speech at the summit today: "Super rice is not genetically modified technology."

"I have a dream, which is called the dream of hybrid rice covering the whole world." Today, Yuan Longping told the audience about his dream while attending the Summit Forum on the status quo and Future of Food Security. Yuan Longping said that hybrid rice has played a key role in ensuring food safety in the new century. If 50% of the world's rice fields are planted with hybrid rice, it can feed an additional 400 million to 500 million people. "therefore, the development of hybrid rice plays an important role in ensuring world food security and promoting world peace."

"nowadays, there is a debate about the safety of genetically modified rice. How can we ensure the safety of super rice?" Many listeners are very concerned about Yuan Longping's ongoing super rice experiment.

"Super rice is not a transgenic technology, but a conventional technology." Yuan Longping explained people's concerns. He introduced that super rice is to cross varieties that can complement each other in terms of superiority, resulting in the first generation of heterotic hybrids, thereby increasing yield.

On the issue of genetically modified organisms, Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation and former US Deputy Secretary of State, said that there are many organic products produced in the United States, but the production cost of this product is relatively high. For backward areas that are still hungry, such as many countries in Africa, 80% of the poor are small and medium-sized farmers who are victims of bad weather, so they need to grow GM crops that can better withstand disasters in order to ensure the supply of local food.

In Quinn's view, the production of organic food and the cultivation of genetically modified crops need to coexist in order to meet people's needs. (press note Wang run)