A Chinese film studio will start to shoot a television series featuring Yuan Longping, world-famed as the "father of hybrid rice", later this month.

The eight-part television play will be filmed by the Xiaoxiang Film Studio based in Changsha, the capital of central China's Hunan Province, in cooperation with the China Central Television Station, Hunan Economic Television Station and the Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Center, according to a spokesman for the studio.

Zhang Jinbiao, of the Xiaoxiang studio, will direct the play, while Zhang Xiaobo, an actor with the Shangrao Drama Troupe from east China's Jiangxi Province, will play the role of Yuan Longping.

Kang Jianmin, head of the Xiaoxiang Film Studio, said they have spent two years making preparations to shoot the television series.

Kang added that they would try hard to retell the vivid stories of Yuan's devotion to cultivating hybrid rice and benefiting mankind, with the purpose of advocating and respecting the spirit of science in society.

Yuan Longping, 71, is a research fellow with the Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Center and also an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He has spent most of his time doing research on hybrid rice in Hunan.

The hybrid rice developed by a team led by Yuan has been grown on half of the country's total rice cultivation fields since the 1960s, adding some 300 billion kilograms to the country's grain output.

(Xinhua 04/25/2001)