If Yuan Longping had patented hybrid rice, would he have become the world's richest person?

Summary: Some people say that if Yuan Longping had patented hybrid rice, he would be the world's richest person. Is that really the case?

I have also seen similar reports before saying that if the hybrid rice technology had been patented, then Yuan Longping would be the world's richest person! However, Science Xingnong says clearly here that even if Yuan Longping's hybrid rice technology could be patented, he still could not become the richest person! Why? First, what could be patented is the wild abortive cytoplasmic male sterility (WA CMS) type; second, the patent validity period is 20 years; third, in the era when hybrid rice was invented, the transformation of achievements belonged to the work unit.

Wild abortive cytoplasmic male sterility (WA CMS) type

The theory of rice heterosis was not proposed by Yuan Longping but by Henry Beachell of the United States in 1926, and the miracle rice IR8 that he developed (at IRRI, the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines) doubled the rice yield per unit area in the Philippines. Japanese scholars discovered a wild male sterile line as early as 1917, but although they carried out related research, they still failed to achieve three-line matching. The rice WA CMS discovered by Li Bihu was found in 1973, relatively later than international research.

A precondition for large-scale production of hybrid rice is having male sterile lines and restorer lines, so if a patent could be applied for, it would certainly have been applied for based on WA CMS. However, WA CMS is not the only rice male sterility type, and the HLCMS of Academician Zhu Yingguo of Wuhan University is also a very good material, and varieties have been bred from it. In addition, BTCMS has already been applied on a large scale. Although it is slightly later than WA, if WA had been protected by a patent, then other sterility types would have developed rapidly.

Patent validity period

The internationally accepted rule is that a patent is valid for 20 years. The first hybrid rice was bred in 1975. Even if a patent could have been applied for that year, and our country then fully used WA CMS cytoplasmic breeding for hybrid seeds in the following 20 years, even so it would only be 20 years of patent fees. Moreover, the patent fee could not be high, because hybrid rice is not as popular as hybrid corn. Although hybrid rice has a very high yield per unit area, its quality is not high. The figure above shows that after 20 years of promotion and planting, the share of hybrid rice was only about 30%, and if patent fees were charged, then even this share would not exist. This is certain. Within such a period, with such slow promotion, expecting to become the richest person is obviously unrealistic.

Transformation of achievements

The discovery of WA CMS and the subsequent series of research were all achievements obtained based on national scientific research funding and with the Hunan Academy of Agricultural Sciences as the supporting institution. Whether patents or variety authorizations, they were all carried out through the supporting institution and the state, and in the era of 1975, the transformation of achievements still belonged to the state, and what individuals could obtain from it was only some awards. Therefore, the so-called claim that the patent belonged to Yuan Longping is fundamentally impossible. Even today, the transformation of achievements obtained in scientific research institutions still belongs to the institution, though the main inventors can obtain higher rewards from it.

In summary, in the era when hybrid rice was discovered, Yuan Longping could not have applied for any related patent, and our country's Patent Law had not yet been implemented (it was implemented in 1984). Moreover, even if it had been implemented, Yuan Longping still could not have become the richest person, because there were corresponding hybrid rice types on the market to choose from, and WA CMS from Yuan Longping's team was not the only option. And even if all hybrid rice seeds came from Yuan Longping's team, he still could not have become the richest person. Some people calculated that referring to 200 million mu of rice each year (in reality even 100 million mu was impossible), one jin of seeds per mu, and calculating 15 years of variety authorization, 30 jin of seeds; even if one jin of seeds was 20 yuan, how much money is that? Compared with the wealth of people at the level of Ma Yun and Wang Jianlin, it is obviously still far inferior.