Chinese hybrid rice had taken root in all over the world,
feeding a significant proportion of the world's population, said
Dr. Yang Jubao, a prestigious rice expert.
Delivering his speech at the on-going new hybrid rice species
exhibition at Sanya, south China's Hainan
island province, Dr. Yang said under the support of the government,
Chinese agronomists provided a great many countries with the
advanced technologies of hybrid growth, together with the latest
species.
"National boundaries never exist in the field of science, and it
is the great aspiration of the Chinese scientists that the people
of all races under the sun will be fed on our hybrid rice," Dr.
Yang said. He was countering an accusation that China never shared
its hybrid rice technologies with other countries.
A graduate from the University of the Philippines, Dr. Yang was
the first Chinese conferred a PHD degree of rice.
Dr. Yang was recommended and sent by the Ministry of Agriculture
to Vietnam in 1992, as the hybrid rice consultant of the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
He was "the only UN official who went down to farms in Vietnam,"
according to local peasants, many of whom had received his
advice.
With the help of the FAO, Vietnam became the world's third
largest rice exporter, compared with its great shortage of food
supplies several years before.
Dr. Yang was awarded a medal for boosting agriculture and rural
development by the Vietnamese government in praise of his
contributions.
Dr. Yang said the growth of hybrid rice was of great importance
to increase farm production and guarantee the food supply,
especially in needy countries where arable land was limited,
populations rapidly expanded and labor was cheap.
During the past decade, countries of Asia have benefited from
the sustainable supports in hybrid rice breeding given by FAO,
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), United Nations
Development Program (UNDP), Asian Development Bank (ADB) and
China.
In 2003, Dr. Yang noted, the hybrid rice acreage reached around
one million hectares in south and southeast Asian countries,
including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines
and Vietnam.
In Egypt the hybrid rice imported from China is doing very well
in the saline-alkali soil and the production is even 35 percent
higher than in normal soil.
The demand for rice kept growing, said Dr. Yang, not only in
Asian countries where rice was the staple food but also in Africa,
Latin America and Europe.
In 1974, superb Chinese agronomist Yuan Longping developed the
world's first hybrid rice variety, which increased rice output by
15 to 20 percent over regular species.
After years' expansion, hybrid rice growth has taken half of
China's rice paddies with the unit production of 6.2 tons per
hectare.
A major world rice producer, China expects to see its acreage
under rice expand by four percent to 28.23 million hectares this
year, and turn out 177 million tons of rice, a growth of seven
percent over the previous year.
(Xinhua News Agency April 17, 2004)