To China's rice bowl rescue: The new super rice
"The global economic downturn will always end,” said Yuan Longping, “but food security is the problem we have to face every second."Forget the movie, 2012 may be the year that China gets its first “super rice,” according to Yuan Longping, the man who developed the first hybrid rice varieties in the 1970s.
Its super-rice powers? It will be a high-yield rice hybrid that is expected to yield 13.5 tons of rice per hectare (current types of rice average nine tons per hectare), Yuan told Shanghai Daily.
Yuan made his revelation at the Shanghai World Expo forum on science and technology, which was, oddly enough, not held in Shanghai but in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province.
"The average yield of hybrid rice is at least 20 percent more than that of inbred rice, feeding 70 million more people annually," Yuan told the audience.
With China facing a difficult grain harvest this summer due to strong rains in the south and droughts in the north, a high-yield rice cannot come too soon. It’s one thing if garlic prices skyrocket, it’ll be another if rice prices do. "The global economic downturn will always end,” said Yuan, “but food security is the problem we have to face every second."
Yuan continued, saying that "Hybrid rice will play a key role in ensuring food security worldwide in the new century. If 50 percent of the world's rice paddies were planted with hybrids, rice production could be increased by another 150 million tons, and 400 to 500 million more people could be fed."
Currently it's estimated that as much as 60 percent of the total rice grown in China is from Yuan’s original hybrid species that he has developed since the 1970s.
If you want to see Yuan’s rice in person, you’ll have to get in line at the 2010 Expo China Pavilion. Seedlings from Yuan’s latest variety of super hybrid rice are being grown on the third floor of the pavilion. The Expo crop is expected to produce more than 800 kg per 667 square meters -- almost double 'normal' rice's average -- in September.
