Yuan Longping (1930-2021), an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, is honoured as the "Father of Hybrid Rice". He lifted Chinese rice yields from 300 to over 1,000 kg per mu and fed millions more.
Breakthrough: in the 1970s he found the wild male-sterile rice plant and cracked the "three-line" hybrid method; he kept raising yield records and spread the technology to dozens of countries.
Humble life: he worked in the paddies in rubber boots year-round - "you cannot grow rice on a computer" was his creed; his dream was "shade under the rice".
Global reach: hybrid rice now grows widely in India, Vietnam, the Philippines and Africa; his team also bred "seawater rice" (salt-tolerant).
Honours: the National Highest Science and Technology Award, the Republic Medal, FAO laurels; when he died in 2021, the whole country mourned spontaneously.
See it: the Longping Rice Museum in Changsha (free, reserve ahead) and the Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Centre; rice-field parks offer transplanting experiences.
Yuan Longping (1930-2021), father of hybrid rice, is the man who fed China. His name is written into the world food history.
Born in Beiping (today Beijing), he grew up amid war and witnessed hunger, planting the wish "let everyone eat their fill".
He graduated from Southwest Agriculture College and taught at a rural school in Hunan. In the 1960s, when food was scarce, he resolved to increase rice yields.
At the time, scientists widely held rice, a self-pollinating crop, could not be hybridised. Yuan did not believe it; he spent days in paddies, searching plant by plant for a "natural male-sterile plant".
In 1964, among fourteen thousand panicles, he found the crucial one - the starting point of Chinese hybrid rice research.
In 1973 his team bred "Nanyou No.2", yielding over twenty percent more than ordinary rice. Chinese rice output climbed from then on.
His hybrid rice fed China and spread to dozens of countries, benefiting hundreds of millions. India, Vietnam, the Philippines and many African nations grow his rice.
He won many world honours including UN FAO awards, yet his best-known image remains the old farmer in a white shirt standing in a paddy.
His plain words moved the world: "my lifelong pursuit is to keep everyone from hunger."
Even past ninety he kept going to the fields: "computers cannot grow rice." His team continued research on saline-tolerant "seawater rice" to turn barren land productive.
On 22 May 2021 he died at 91. That day countless Chinese came out in the rain to bid him farewell, crying "Grandpa Yuan, go safely."
He proved with one life: true greatness is not how much money one has, but how many people one has fed. He is the "rice bodhisattva" in Chinese hearts.
One rice plant fed the world; one dream served all people - his story deserves to be known by everyone on Earth.
