New Chinese hybrid rice varieties capture overseas markets

In recent years, red-lotus hybrid rice has rapidly captured overseas markets thanks to its high yield, excellent quality and wide adaptability, with its planting area continuously expanding, making it a "star" in the "going global" push of Chinese hybrid rice varieties.

New Chinese hybrid rice varieties capture overseas markets

Farooq Mehdi, an official of Pakistan's Agricultural Advisory Council, recently found Zhu Yingguo, the "father of red-lotus hybrid rice" and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, in Wuhan. He said excitedly: "The planting area of red-lotus hybrid rice in Pakistan is growing larger and larger, but today is the first time I have met the scientist who bred it."

Farooq, who is mainly engaged in China-Pakistan agricultural project cooperation, made a request to Zhu Yingguo: he hopes China can carry out more cooperation with Pakistan on red-lotus hybrid rice varieties, and together make a greater contribution to world food security.

Red-lotus hybrid rice is a new type of Chinese hybrid rice, and its application and promotion are still at an initial stage. Since its promotion began in 2003, a cumulative 100 million mu has been planted in China's Yangtze River basin and areas to its south.

However, in recent years, red-lotus hybrid rice has rapidly captured overseas markets thanks to its high yield, excellent quality and wide adaptability, with its planting area continuously expanding, making it a "star" in the "going global" push of Chinese hybrid rice varieties.

Data from the State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice at Wuhan University show that red-lotus hybrid rice is more adaptable than other Chinese hybrid rice to the climate, land and other growing conditions of tropical regions. At present, it has been successfully registered and promoted in Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Myanmar, among other countries.

Farooq said: "Pakistan imports about 10,000 tons of hybrid rice varieties from China every year, and red-lotus varieties already account for more than 40%, making them the well-deserved 'number one seed'."

In addition to Southeast Asian countries and others, red-lotus hybrid rice also has a strong market in Africa.

This year, an agricultural cooperation project in Cameroon run by Shaanxi Overseas Investment Development Co., Ltd. trial-planted three varieties of red-lotus hybrid rice. Judging from this year's harvest, the per-unit yield of all three varieties reached about 600 kg, far higher than the performance of other hybrid rice varieties locally.

Cheng Shihua, director of the China National Rice Research Institute, said that the advantages of red-lotus hybrid rice are very obvious: high yield, good grain quality, wide adaptability, high resistance, and it is also a low-input variety, requiring less fertilizer than other types of hybrid rice, making it an environmentally friendly variety. In 2009, it was confirmed by China's Ministry of Agriculture as one of the third batch of "super hybrid rice varieties" for demonstration and promotion.

Zhu Yingguo said that since the beginning of this year, agricultural departments of many countries, including Indonesia, the Philippines and Pakistan, have expressed the wish to further deepen cooperation, and they hope to carry out cooperation in many areas, including scientific research, application and promotion, and talent training.

Experts believe that the "going global" of red-lotus hybrid rice varieties will bring "win-win" results: helping Southeast Asian and African countries and others raise grain output and quality and ensure food supply; helping promote Chinese hybrid rice technology overseas and enhancing China's influence and voice on world food security issues; and the application and promotion of red-lotus hybrid rice can gain access to broader biological genetic resources, helping breed better red-lotus hybrid rice varieties.

Cheng Shihua said that red-lotus rice varieties increase yields by 20% to 50% on average compared with local rice varieties, greatly raising local rice output and quality. The potential planting area of red-lotus hybrid rice in these countries reaches 37.7 million hectares, and its contribution to world food security is self-evident.

"Over the past 40-plus years, we have done sufficiently thorough and solid basic research. Now we need more universities, research institutes, enterprises and others to join in the application." Zhu Yingguo said that in scientific research collaboration, he hopes that coordinated efforts at the national level will be mobilized once again.