Water-saving and high-yielding rice, with a jasmine fragrance in every bowl

Wearing shoes to go into the paddy field, water-saving rice cultivation has become a reality. After the team led by researcher Luo Lijun at the Shanghai Agrobiological Gene Center created the world's first hybrid upland rice "Huhan 1A", it has achieved another breakthrough. Hanyou 3 has been approved, and under the condition of saving 50% of water resources, its actual yield per mu exceeded 500 kg for the first time.

Shanghai's hybrid upland rice research took scientists 10 years, screened 10,000 resources, and selected more than 100 relatively drought-tolerant resources as parents for breeding. "The characteristic of hybrid rice is high yield, just like the mule, which is a cross between a horse and a donkey and has very strong vitality." Luo Lijun said that ordinary rice yields about 550 kg to 600 kg per mu, while hybrid upland rice can still reach 500 kg while saving 50% of water. The highest-yielding "Hanyou 3" even reached 504.97 kg, basically equivalent to the yield of hybrid rice grown on a large scale.

Researcher Luo Lijun said, "Testing has shown that these new hybrid upland rice combinations have reached the grade-two high-quality rice standard issued by the Ministry of Agriculture. Their grain quality is comparable to that of 'Hanyou Xiangqing', the high-quality hybrid rice with the largest promotion area in Shanghai, and after cooking they even have a special jasmine fragrance."

According to reports, the three varieties have been promoted and planted on 534.96 million mu in the southern rice region, increasing farmers' income by 589 million yuan and saving 1.6 billion tons of water resources. The hybrid upland rice successfully trial-planted in Shanghai this time is not only suitable for planting in dry land in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and in "rain-fed fields" that rely solely on rainfall for irrigation, but can also be used for "water-saving cultivation" in existing irrigated paddy fields. A conservative estimate is that the promotion area can exceed 20 million mu.

Related link: Upland rice research is of great significance

Data show that drought conditions in our country are becoming increasingly serious. The probability of spring drought is 60%-80% in the northern rice region and more than 40% in the area south of the Yangtze River basin; the probability of summer drought is 60%-70% in the northwest rice region and 40% and 50% in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the Sichuan Basin and the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau; autumn drought occurs even more commonly. The grain loss caused by perennial drought in our country reaches more than 30 million mu.

Experts estimate that if hybrid upland rice were planted on our country's 200 million-300 million mu of sand dunes, saline-alkali land and dry land in the mountainous areas of the south, rice output could increase by more than 25 billion kg annually; if part of the hybrid upland rice could be intercropped or relay-cropped within nearly 1 billion-1.5 billion mu of dryland crops, rice output could increase by more than 10 billion kg annually; and if traditional low-yielding upland rice and paddy fields planted relying on "rainwater" were switched to high-yielding hybrid upland rice varieties, rice output could increase by about 5 billion kg annually.