‘Father of Hybrid Rice’ Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

According to reports by the Norwegian local media on 31 January 2014, famous Chinese hybrid rice breeding expert, Yuan Long-ping, has been nominated for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. Yuan is a Chinese agricultural scientist and educator, known for developing the first hybrid rice varieties in the 1970s.

Yuan has placed great efforts to improve rice production in Asia and has contributed significantly to solving the food shortage problem. “Half of China’s rice is grown in the development of hybrid varieties. [Yuan’s] hybrid rice technology has now been extended to more than 20 countries’, reported by the Chinese media. Hybrid rice has since been grown in dozens of countries in Africa, America and Asia, providing a robust food source in high famine risk areas. For his contributions, Yuan is called “The Father of Hybrid Rice” by the Chinese media.

On 10 January 2014, a team led by Yuan has won a national award for progress in science and technology for his work on two-line hybrid rice technology. According to China's state media, the two-line hybrid rice breeding system driven by Yuan can develop high quality rice at 20 times the probability of three-line hybrids with better overall quality and volume. As at the end of 2012, the technology has been utilised in 499 million mu across 16 provinces, cities and autonomous regions in the country, producing 11.1 billion kilograms of grains valued at 27.2 billion yuan (US$4.5 billion).

In January 2014, Yuan said in an interview that genetically modified food is the future direction of food. He is currently researching how to transform a certain gene of corn into rice, which would improve photosynthetic efficiency by 30% to 50% and increase output. He said he believes rice developed from this type of gene would be safe for consumption as it is transformed from corn, though the procedure has not been successful yet.