Hanyou No. 3 rice saves water and resists drought, high-yielding and easy to grow

Rice is high-yielding, but afraid of thirst; upland rice is drought-tolerant, but its yield is slightly inferior. Shanghai rice experts ingeniously merged the advantages of the high yield of rice and the drought tolerance of upland rice into a single grain of rice seed, breeding the world's first water-saving and drought-resistant hybrid rice, "Hanyou No. 3". The author recently saw the mature "Hanyou No. 3" bent over from "exhaustion": each panicle bears 110 grains, and the yield per mu is better than that of conventional rice, while the rice field saves more than 50% of water. The new rice can go on the market in Shanghai at the end of the month. According to testing by a professional department, the grain quality of "Hanyou No. 3" reaches the Ministry of Agriculture's second-grade high-quality rice standard, and is comparable to that of "Hanyou Xiangqing", the high-quality hybrid rice with the largest planting area in Shanghai.

Outstanding performance at the first harvest

Of China's 430 million mu of rice fields, only 30% are high-yielding fields. For a long time, Shanghai scientists have been painstakingly searching for high-yielding, water-saving and drought-resistant rice varieties.

Upland rice and rice are "full siblings"; their common ancestor is wild rice growing beside marshes and ponds. Later, those that "went into the water" became rice, and those that "went up the mountains" became upland rice. China's upland rice breeding level is relatively backward. Shanghai has successively bred new upland rice varieties such as "Zhonghan No. 3", "Huhan No. 3" and "Huhan No. 15", raising the yield per mu to 350 kg. However, compared with their rice siblings, which average 500 kg per mu, these improved upland rice varieties are still "slightly inferior".

In 2003, the Shanghai Agricultural Biological Gene Center found the world's first upland rice male sterile line, "Huhan 1A", making upland rice hybrid rice possible. Last year, Luo Lijun, the center's chief scientist, led the research group to complete the three-line matching and for the first time successfully realized hybridization between upland rice and rice, breeding water-saving and drought-resistant hybrid rice.

This year, 50 mu of "Hanyou No. 3" in the Shanghai suburbs were harvested for the first time, with outstanding performance. It has both the high-yield advantage of rice, with a yield per mu exceeding 550 kg and grain quality and yield on par with rice, and the "frugal virtue" of upland rice, saving more than 400 tons of water per mu.

Increasing yield without forgetting energy saving and emission reduction

China's freshwater resources are limited, and rice fields consume 56% of the country's total water use every year. As the yield of "super rice" repeatedly hits new highs, the pesticides, fertilizers and water consumption of rice fields have also increased exponentially.

By comparison, "Hanyou No. 3" stands out for its environmental advantages in energy saving and emission reduction: it has strong disease resistance and grows quickly, with a whole growth period of only 106 days, more than 40 days earlier than ordinary rice, avoiding the peak period of rice field diseases and insect pests. The number of fertilizer and pesticide applications is only one third that of rice fields, saving nearly 160 yuan per mu.

Even "lazybones" can get a bumper harvest growing rice

"The water-saving and drought-resistant hybrid rice was born in Shanghai, but it is determined to serve the central and western regions." Luo Lijun introduced that "Hanyou No. 3" has already been introduced and trial-planted in Guangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan, Yunnan, Chongqing, ** and other places. Local farmers praise it: direct seeding by broadcasting, simple cultivation; with less watering, even "lazybones" growing rice can obtain a good harvest. Last year and this year, "Hanyou No. 3" obtained new variety approval in Shanghai and Guangxi respectively, and began large-scale promotion and planting.