Is it really true that super rice only had a small problem?

In Bengbu, Anhui, ten thousand mu of “super rice” suffered total crop failure or reduced yields last year, pushing the seed supplier Longping High-Tech into the spotlight. Amid the controversy, Longping High-Tech announced on the evening of April 12 that it would stop selling this hybrid rice seed and announced plans to establish a post-disaster relief fund for the seed industry. Yuan Longping, however, believed that this time in Anhui there was only a small problem, and that super rice as a whole could not be said to be problematic based on this. (News Morning Post, April 14)

“Liangyou 0293” suffered a Waterloo in Anhui, and the related debate over super rice subsequently became a hot topic. China is a major grain-growing country and has historically also been a grain-deficient country, so of course it cannot easily abandon the pursuit of yield and rashly choose taste preference. Some data say that the promotion area of super rice in our country accounts for 30% of the national rice planting area, with a yield increase per mu of 13.2%, driving rice production increases. Therefore, even someone with no dialectical thinking at all would probably not dismiss super rice with a single blow.

However, in the Anhui rice total crop failure and reduced income incident, the posture of the relevant parties appears not quite scientific.

First, once something went wrong, they denied it was “super rice,” but is the truth really so? For example, the Ministry of Agriculture responded that “Liangyou 0293” had not participated in the super rice variety certification organized by the Ministry of Agriculture and was not a “super rice” variety. For this reason, when the Hunan Academy of Agricultural Sciences was interviewed by reporters, it explained that in super rice certification there are two methods: Ministry of Agriculture certification and provincial-level certification, and the certification standards are mainly based on large-area yield levels and so on. “Liangyou 0293” is a super-high-yield variety approved in 2006 by the National Crop Variety Approval Committee through the Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Center, and was once recognized by Hunan Province as a super rice combination, which does not conflict with the Ministry of Agriculture’s “not having approved it.” In fact, on Longping High-Tech’s official website, in the promotional materials for “Liangyou 0293,” and on the official website of the Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Center and in related academic papers, “Liangyou 0293” was all labeled as super rice. So here comes the question: was it that the agricultural department failed to promptly correct the erroneous designation of “Liangyou 0293,” or was the seed company suspected of false advertising?

Second, the “father of hybrid rice” and honorary chairman of Longping High-Tech, Yuan Longping, said in an interview with Hunan Daily that “one cannot completely negate super rice just because an individual variety had a small problem.” Elder Yuan is a scientist respected by the Chinese people, and his statement is not without reason. However, even if we do not mention that in 2007 in Hubei, the planted “Liangyou 0293” was not tolerant of high temperatures and had a seed-setting rate of only 30%; nor mention that in 2008 in Wuhu, Anhui, where “Liangyou 0293” was planted, a large-area white blight leaf disease occurred; and even in 2012, 600 mu of “Liangyou 0293” in Jiangsu were infected with rice blast——looking only at October 2014, when “Liangyou 0293” planted in six cities in Anhui including Bengbu, Anqing, Hefei, Chuzhou, Ma’anshan, and Huainan suffered large-area yield reduction and total crop failure, with affected area exceeding ten thousand mu. Can this be said to be only “a small problem”? And if this was “a small problem,” why did Longping High-Tech “decide to stop selling ‘Liangyou 0293’”? From the perspective of super rice research and promotion institutions, “one cannot completely negate super rice just because an individual variety had a small problem” is a correct and rational attitude; but from the perspective of farmers who suffered total crop failure, “one cannot fail to see the concrete shortcomings that objectively exist just because of the historical contributions of super rice” is probably also a rational understanding consistent with dialectics.

Moreover, when it comes to science, one never treats “small problems” lightly; otherwise, there would not be the brilliance of Longping High-Tech today, nor would there be the profound impact of super rice on Chinese agriculture. Today, we need not kick super rice when it is down, but we should even more squarely face those “small problems” in fields like super rice that are actually not so small.