Yuan Longping responds to doubts about super rice: Please stop throwing dirty water

Recently, doubts about super rice have kept appearing in the media, and some online comments have even aimed their criticism at China's hybrid rice research and at me personally. I have something to say about this.

First, super rice is a major project proposed and established by the state to ensure the food needs of the entire nation. From the actual situation, rice is the largest food crop both in our country and in the world, with more than half the world's population and more than 60% of China's population using rice as their staple food. Especially in China, where there are many people and little land, the only way we can solve the food problem is by increasing the yield per unit area of cultivated land, and there is no doubt about this direction of development. It was precisely out of consideration for ensuring food security that the Ministry of Agriculture officially launched the “China Super Rice” breeding program in 1996. At present, super rice varieties have evolved to the fourth phase, and the overall situation keeps improving. As researchers, we have always pursued higher yields for super rice, and this is the eternal theme of our hybrid rice research work.

During this period, I am inspecting super rice demonstration plots in Changsha, Hunan. At present, China has a total of 39 100-mu super rice demonstration plots, and some of them have already had a bumper harvest. According to my calculations, about 5 demonstration plots have exceeded 1,000 kg per mu, and the average yield is also around 950 kg. In order to fully understand the development level of China's super rice, we can make a simple comparison: at present, the world's rice planting area is about 2.2 billion mu, with an average yield of 300 kg per mu. Even in some countries with relatively advanced agricultural science and technology, such as Japan, the average yield is only 450 kg per mu. From this alone, we can see how great an advantage developing super rice has brought to China's agricultural production.

⟦NL> Of course, the doubts that have appeared recently have also exposed some problems that exist in super rice itself. On this point, I want 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 yields but poor quality, but at that time the main goal was to solve the problem of having enough food, and ordinary people did not have such high demands for rice. However, as people's living standards become higher and higher, ordinary people's demands for quality of life have become higher, and for this reason we have also continuously improved super rice. My principle is to have both high yield and high quality, and absolutely not to sacrifice yield in pursuit of quality. Looking at it now, this goal has also been achieved. According to the standards of the Ministry of Agriculture, rice produced from super rice has already reached grade two or above.

Even so, super rice still has some technical problems that remain to be solved, for example, its resistance to pests and diseases, especially rice blast, is still not ideal. According to the Ministry of Agriculture's nine-level evaluation index, the pest and disease resistance of super rice is at the middle level of grade 5. We hope that in the future super rice will reach at least grades two or three, that is, a high-resistance level. I understand society's high expectations for our agricultural research, but agricultural research and production can never be accomplished overnight. The growth and improvement cycle of super rice is very long, requiring at least three to five years. Even if you work an extra all-night shift, you cannot solve the problem that quickly.

I am now already in my 80s. I have experienced both the hard days of going hungry in the 1960s and the good days of having ample food and clothing now. Among those doubts about super rice and even about me personally, some are out of goodwill, but some also seem to have ulterior motives. What I want to say about this is that super rice research concerns national honor and food security, and no matter what difficulties we encounter, I will never shrink back. Now our research team is working toward the fifth phase of super rice, striving for higher yields 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 a hybrid rice expert.)