Yuan Longping

Yuan Longping (Chinese: 袁隆平 ; September 7, 1930 –

Yuan Longping
May 22, 2021) was a Chinese agronomist and member of the
Chinese Academy of Engineering known for developing the 袁隆平
first hybrid rice varieties in the 1970s, part of the Green
Revolution in agriculture.[1] For his contributions, Yuan is
known as the "Father of Hybrid Rice".[2][3]

Hybrid rice has since been grown in dozens of countries in

Africa, America, and Asia—boosting food security and
providing a robust food source in areas with a high risk of
famine.[4]

Contents
Early life and education
Career
Early stages of hybrid rice experiments
Yuan Longping in 2019
Ideology
Famine Vice Chairman of the Hunan Provincial
CPPCC Committee
Heterosis (6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th)

Contributions In office
Honors and awards January 1988 – January 2016

Personal life Chairman Liu Zheng→Liu

Fusheng→Wang
Death
Keying→Hu
References Biao→Chen Qiufa
Citations
Member of the Standing Committee of
Bibliography the CPPCC
(6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th)
Further reading
In office
External links
June 1983 – March 2018
Chairman Deng Yingchao → Li
Early life and education Xiannian → Li
Ruihuan → Jia
Yuan was born at Peking Union Medical College Hospital in Qinglin → Yu
Beijing, China on September 7, 1930 to Yuan Xinglie and Zhengsheng
Hua Jing. He was the second of six siblings.[5][6][7] His Personal details
ancestral home is in De'an County, Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province
Born September 7, 1930
in Southern China.[8][9] During the Second Sino-Japanese
Beijing, Republic of
China
War and the Chinese Civil War, he moved with his family Died May 22, 2021
and attended school in many places, including Hunan, (aged 90)
Chongqing, Hankou and Nanjing.[8] Changsha, Hunan,
People's Republic of
He graduated from Southwest Agricultural College (now part
China
of Southwest University) in 1953.
Nationality Chinese

Career Spouse(s) Deng Zhe (m. 1964)

Children 2
Yuan began his teaching career at the Anjiang Agricultural Education High School
School, Hunan Province.[10] In the 1960s he had the idea of Affiliated to Nanjing
hybridizing rice to increase its yield after reading of similar
Normal University
research that was underway successfully in maize and
sorghum.[11] Undertaking this hybridization was important Alma mater Southwest
because the first generation of hybrids is typically more Agricultural College
vigorous and productive than either parent.[10] Occupation Agronomist

For the rest of his life Yuan devoted himself to the research Known for Hybrid rice
and development of better rice varieties. Awards State Preeminent
Science and
The biggest problem was that rice is a self-pollinating plant. Technology Award
Hybridization requires separate male and female plants as
(2001)
parents. The small rice flowers contain both male and female
Wolf Prize in
parts. Although the male parts can be removed, carefully, by
hand (to produce female-only flowers), this is not practical on Agriculture (2004)
a large scale. It was thus difficult to produce hybrid rice in World Food Prize
large quantities. In 1961 he spotted a seed-head of wild (2004)
hybrid rice.[10] By 1964, Yuan hypothesized that naturally- Confucius Peace
mutated male-sterile rice could exist and could be used for the Prize (2012)
creation of new hybrid rice varieties. He and a student spent Order of the
the summer searching for male sterile rice plants. Two years Republic (2019)
later he reported in a scientific publication[12] that he had
found a few individuals of male-sterile rice with potential for Chinese name
production of hybrid rice.[10] Subsequent experiments proved Simplified Chinese 袁隆平
his original hypothesis feasible, which proved to be his most
important contribution to hybrid rice.[10]
Traditional Chinese 袁隆平
Transcriptions
Yuan went on to solve more problems over the next decades Standard Mandarin
to achieve higher yielding hybrid rice. This took more than a
Hanyu Pinyin Yuán Lóngpíng
decade.[11] The first experimental hybrid rice did not show
any significant advantage over commonly grown varieties, so Wade–Giles Yuan Lung-p'ing
Yuan suggested crossbreeding cultivated rice varieties with IPA [ɥɛ̌n lʊ̌ŋ pʰǐŋ]
ones growing wild in the countryside.[13] In 1970, beside a
railway line in Hainan, he and his team found a particularly important wild variety.[13] Using this one
within a breeding programme resulted in varieties with yields improved by 20 - 30% in the late 1970s.[13]
For this achievement, Yuan Longping was dubbed the "Father of Hybrid Rice."[14]

At present, as much as 50 percent of China's total number of rice paddies grow Yuan Longping's hybrid
rice and these hybrid rice paddies yield 60 percent of the total rice production in China.[14] China's total
rice output rose from 56.9 million tons in 1950 to 194.7 million tons in 2017.[13] The annual yield increase
is enough to feed 70 million additional people.[15]
The "Super Rice" Yuan worked on improving showed a 30 percent
higher yield, compared to common rice, with a record yield of
17,055 kilograms per hectare being registered in Yongsheng
County in Yunnan Province in 1999.[15]

In January 2014, Yuan said in an interview that genetically

modified food would be the future direction of food and that he had
been working on genetic modification of rice.[16]
Yuan Longping in 1953 in Southwest
Early stages of hybrid rice experiments University. Yuan is in the back row,
third from the left.

Ideology

As recently as the 1950s, two separate theories of heredity were

taught in China. One theory was from Gregor Mendel and Thomas
Hunt Morgan and was based on the concept of genes and alleles.
The other theory was from Soviet Union scientists Ivan
Vladimirovich Michurin and Trofim Lysenko which stated that
organisms would change over the course of their lives to adapt to
environmental changes they experienced and their offspring would
then inherit the changes. At the time, the Chinese government's Yuan Longping in 1962
official stance on scientific theories was one of "leaning towards
the Soviet side", and any ideology from the Soviet Union was
deemed to be the only truth while everything else would be seen as being invalid.[11] Yuan, as an
agricultural student at Southwest University, remained skeptical on both theories and started his own
experiments to try and come up with his own conclusions.

Yuan was taught and mentored by some biologists who followed the ideas of Gregor Mendel and Thomas
Hunt Morgan. These included Guan Xianghuan at Southwest Agricultural College and, later, Bao Wenkui
at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing.[10] Both were persecuted. Guan took his own
life in the 1960s while Bao was imprisoned.[10] In 1962, Yuan visited Bao to discuss Mendelian genetics,
and Bao gave him access to up-to-date foreign scientific literature.[11] In 1966 Yuan himself was named as
a counter-revolutionary and there were plans to imprison him. However, a letter of support for Yuan and his
work was received based on his publication about male-sterile rice, sent from Nie Rongzhen, director of the
National Science and Technology Commission. As a result, Yuan was allowed to continue his research and
provided with both research assistants and financial support by the Hunan Provincial Party Committee
leader Hua Guofeng and others.[10][11] Yuan did not join the Communist Party during the Cultural
Revolution or later.[13]

Yuan's first experiments, before he became focused on rice, were on the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas)
and watermelons.[13] Following Michurin's theory, he grafted Ipomoea alba (a plant with high
photosynthesis rate and high efficiency in starch production) onto sweet potatoes. These plants grew
substantially larger tubers than those of plants without I. alba grafts. However, when he planted seeds from
these grafted sweet potatoes for a second generation, the tubers were normal sized from seeds of the sweet
potato part of the plant, while seeds from the I. alba part did not grow sweet potatoes.[13] He continued
with similar grafting experiments on other plants, but none of the plants produced offspring with any
mixtures of the beneficial traits grafted into their parents. This was in contradiction to the expectations of
Michurin's theory. Yuan concluded, "I had learned some background of Mendel and Morgan's theory, and I
knew from journal papers that it was proven by experiments and real agricultural applications, such as
seedless watermelon. I desired to read more and learn more, but I can only do it secretly."[17]
Famine

In 1959 China experienced the Great Chinese Famine. Yuan as an agricultural scientist could do little to
greatly help people around him in Hunan province. "There was nothing in the field because hungry people
took away all the edible things they can find. They eat grass, seeds, fern roots, or even white clay at the
very extreme."[13] He remembered the sight of those who had starved to death all his life.[10] Yuan
considered applying the inheritance rules onto sweet potatoes and wheat since their fast rate of growth
made them the practical solutions for the famine. However, he realized that in Southern China sweet potato
was never a part of the daily diet and wheat didn't grow well in that area. Therefore, he turned his mind to
rice.

Heterosis

Back in 1906, geneticist George Harrison Shull experimented with hybrid maize. He observed that
inbreeding reduced vigor and yield among the offspring but crossbreeding did the opposite. Those
experiments proved the concept of heterosis.[18] In the 1950s, geneticist J. C. Stephens and a few others
hybridized two sorghum varieties found in Africa to create high-yielding offspring.[19] Those results were
inspiring for Yuan. However, maize and sorghum reproduce mainly through cross-pollination, while rice is
a self-pollinating plant, which would make any crossbreeding attempts difficult, for obvious reasons. In
Edmund Ware Sinnott's book Principles of Genetics,[20] it clearly states that self-pollinating plants, like
wheat and rice, have experienced long-term selection both by nature and by humans. Therefore, traits that
were inferior were all excluded, and the remaining traits were all superior. He speculated that there would
be no advantage in crossbreeding rice, and that the nature of self-pollination makes it hard to do cross breed
experiments on rice on a large scale.[20]

Contributions
Yuan was both professionally and personally interested on rice production. He spent a majority of his time
in the field, rather than staying confined in a lab or publishing papers. As such, he played a large role in
Chinese agriculture by mentoring and leading others in the field, which helped foster future achievements
in Chinese agriculture.[7]

In 1979, his technique for hybrid rice was introduced into the United States, making it the first case of
intellectual property rights transfer in the history of the People's Republic of China.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization 1991 statistics show that 20 percent of the world's
rice output came from 10 percent of the world's rice fields that grow hybrid rice.

Yuan advocated for sharing the success of his breakthroughs with other nations. He and his team donated
crucial rice strains to the International Rice Research Institute in 1980. These donated strains were used to
create hybrid rice strains that could sustain and grow in tropical countries to help their food supply chains.
In addition to donating important rice strains, Yuan and his team taught farmers in other countries to grow
and cultivate hybrid rice.[7]

Honors and awards

Four asteroids and a college in China have been named after him. The minor planet 8117 Yuanlongping
was also named after him.[21]
Yuan won the State Preeminent Science and Technology Award of China in 2000, the Wolf Prize in
Agriculture and the World Food Prize in 2004.[14]

He was the Director-General of the China National Hybrid Rice R&D Center and appointed Professor at
Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha.[22] He was a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering,
foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2006) and the 2006 CPPCC.[22]

Yuan worked as the chief consultant for the FAO in 1991.[22]

Personal life
邓则
Yuan married one of his students, Deng Ze ( ) in 1964.[23] They had three sons, among them Yuan
Ding'an (袁定安 ) and Yuan Dingjiang ( 袁定江 ).[24][25]

Death
On March 10, 2021, Yuan Longping collapsed at his hybrid rice Activities in memory of Yuan Longping
research base in Sanya. On April 7, he was transferred to
Changsha, Hunan Province for treatment.[26] At 13:07 on May
22, Yuan Longping died of multiple organ failure at Xiangya
Hospital of Central South University ( 中南大学湘雅医
院 ).[4][27] Considered a national hero,[7] tens of thousands of
people sent flowers to the funeral home.[7]

Flowers as well as rice given by

References the public outside Xiangya
Hospital after the death of Yuan.

Citations
1. Bradsher, Keith; Buckley, Chris (May 23, 2021). "Yuan
Longping, Plant Scientist Who Helped Curb Famine,
Dies at 90" (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/23/worl
d/asia/yuan-longping-dead.html). The New York
Times. Retrieved May 26, 2021.
2. "Dr. Monty Jones and Yuan Longping" (https://www.w
orldfoodprize.org/en/laureates/20002009_laureates/2 People came to the Changsha
004_jones_and_yuan/). World Food Prize. 2004. Mingyangshan Funeral Parlour to
Retrieved October 24, 2017. mourn Yuan Longping, on 23 May

3. "CCTV-" 杂交水稻之父 袁隆平 " " (http://news.cctv.com/s

2021.

pecial/C18407//index.shtml) ["Father of hybrid rice"

Yuan Longping]. China Central Television. Retrieved
October 24, 2017.
4. Ma, Josephine (May 22, 2021). "China's 'father of
hybrid rice' Yuan Longping dies at 90" (https://www.sc
mp.com/news/china/science/article/3134474/chinas-f
ather-hybrid-rice-yuan-longping-dies-90). South
China Morning Post. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
5. https://www.shobserver.com/staticsg/wap/newsDetail?
id=361144
 6. Kemp, Robert. "Yuan Longping, father of hybrid rice,
dies aged 91 - RTHK" (https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/co
mponent/k2/1592170-20210522.htm?). news.rthk.hk.
Retrieved May 22, 2021.
7. Bradsher, Keith; Buckley, Chris (May 23, 2021). "Yuan
Longping, Plant Scientist Who Helped Curb Famine,
Dies at 90" (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/23/worl
d/asia/yuan-longping-dead.html). The New York
Times. Retrieved May 23, 2021.
8. Yuan & Xin 2014, chpt. 1.
9. "杂交水稻之外的袁隆平 " (http://archive.wenming.cn/z
t/2010-11/14/content_21389043_1.htm). Jiefang Daily
(in Chinese (China)). November 14, 2010. Retrieved
May 23, 2021.
10. Wu, Shellen X. (2021). "Yuan Longping (1930–2021)
Crop scientist whose high-yield hybrid rice fed
billions" (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-
01732-2). Nature. 595: 26. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-
01732-2 (https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fd41586-021-017
32-2). S2CID 235633772 (https://api.semanticscholar.
org/CorpusID:235633772). Retrieved June 25, 2021.
11. Rao, Yi. "Rao Yi: The significance of Yuan Longping's
paper 55 years ago" (https://inf.news/en/science/4add
03838c7dabee76e8f6970ca78742.html). iNews.
12. Yuan, L. P. (April 15, 1966). "A preliminary report on
male sterility on rice (Oryza sativa L.)" (https://inf.new
s/en/science/4add03838c7dabee76e8f6970ca78742.
html). Science Bulletin (English Version). 17 (7).
Retrieved June 26, 2021.
13. "Obituary Yuan Longping" (https://www.economist.co
m/obituary/2021/05/29/yuan-longping-died-on-may-2
2nd). The Economist. Vol. 439 Number 9247. May 29,
2021. p. 86.
14. globalreach.com, Global Reach Internet Productions,
LLC - Ames, IA -. "A World-Brand Name: Yuan
Longping, The Father of Hybrid Rice" (https://www.wo
rldfoodprize.org/index.cfm/87428/40007/a_worldbran
d_name_yuan_longping_the_father_of_hybrid_rice).
www.worldfoodprize.org. Retrieved May 2, 2018.
15. Wang, Ling (March 1, 2015). "Yuan Longping: hybrid
rice is on the way to fulfilling its potential" (https://doi.o
rg/10.1007%2Fs11434-015-0755-6). Science
Bulletin. 60 (6): 657–660.
Bibcode:2015SciBu..60..657W (https://ui.adsabs.harv
ard.edu/abs/2015SciBu..60..657W).
doi:10.1007/s11434-015-0755-6 (https://doi.org/10.10
07%2Fs11434-015-0755-6). ISSN 2095-9273 (https://
www.worldcat.org/issn/2095-9273).
16. "Hybrid-rice pioneer Yuan Longping backs
genetically modified foods" (http://www.scmp.com/ne
ws/china/article/1403337/hybrid-rice-pioneer-yuan-lo
ngping-backs-genetically-modified-foods). South
China Morning Post. Retrieved May 2, 2018.
17. Chen 2016.
18. "Improving Corn" (https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/timelin
e/corn/). www.ars.usda.gov. United States
Department of Agriculture.
19. Stephens, J. C.; Holland, R. F. (January 1, 1954).
"Cytoplasmic Male-Sterility For Hybrid Sorghum
Seed Production 1" (https://dl.sciencesocieties.org/pu
blications/aj/abstracts/46/1/AJ0460010020?access=0
&view=pdf). Agronomy Journal. 46 (1): 20–23.
doi:10.2134/agronj1954.00021962004600010006x (h
ttps://doi.org/10.2134%2Fagronj1954.000219620046
00010006x). ISSN 0002-1962 (https://www.worldcat.o
rg/issn/0002-1962).
20. Sinnott, Edmund Ware (1950). Principles of genetics
(https://books.google.com/books?id=TsFUAAAAMAA
J). McGraw-Hill.
21. "8117 Yuanlongping (1996 SD1)" (https://ssd.jpl.nas
a.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=8117). Jet Propulsion
Laboratory.
22. Vitae, China. "China Vitae : Biography of Yuan
Longping" (http://www.chinavitae.com/biography/Yua
n_Longping). www.chinavitae.com. Retrieved May 2,
2018.
23. Yuan & Xin 2014, chpt. 3.
24. Cang, Alfred (May 22, 2021). "China Mourns Death of
Man Who Saved Millions From Hunger" (https://www.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-22/scientist-sy
mbolizing-chinese-food-security-dies-at-91).
Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg. Retrieved June 9, 2021.
25.袁隆平的神坛与江湖 送儿子去港专攻转基因 (http://ne
ws.163.com/14/0107/22/9I16RJON0001124J.html) (in
Chinese). 163.com. January 7, 2014. Retrieved
October 24, 2017.
26.袁隆平保健医生：袁老系在研究基地摔了一跤，正在
医院治疗 (https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_
12798943) [Yuan Longping health care doctor: Mr.
Yuan fell in the research base and is being treated in
湖南红网
the hospital]. [Hunan Red Network].
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/202105220702
37/https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_127989
43) from the original on May 22, 2021. Retrieved
May 22, 2021.
27. Yan, Zhang; Sun, Yilei (May 22, 2021). Feast, Lincoln
(ed.). "UPDATE 1-Yuan Longping, China's father of
hybrid rice, dies at 91 - Xinhua" (https://www.reuters.c
om/article/china-food-idUSL2N2N903K). Reuters.
Retrieved May 22, 2021.

Bibliography

Chen, Qi Wen (2016). Yuǎn lóng píng de shì jiè 袁隆平的世界

[The World of Yuan Longping]
(1 ed.). Zhangsha: Hunan literature and Art Publishing House. ISBN 9787540478988.
Schmalzer, Sigrid (2016). Red Revolution, Green Revolution : Scientific Farming in Socialist
China (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Red_Revolution_Green_Revolution/QFmvCw
AAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0). Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press.
ISBN 9780226330150. Ch. 3 "Yuan Longping: 'Intellectual Peasant'."
Yuan, Longping; Xin, Yeyun (2014). ORAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF YUAN LONGPING (http
s://books.google.com/books?id=AVp_DwAAQBAJ&q=Yuan+Longping&pg=PT15).
Translated by Zhao, Kuangli; Zhao, Baohua. Nottingham: Aurora Publishing LLC Ltd.
ISBN 9781908647962.

Further reading
The man who puts an end to hunger: Yuan Longping, "Father of Hybrid Rice". Beijing:
Foreign Languages Press. 2007. ISBN 9787119051093.

External links
Yuan Longping -- Father of Hybrid Rice (http://www.china.org.cn/english/2001/Mar/8452.ht
m) (2001-03-05)
Yuan Longping -- Remembrance by Chen Lei, Translation by Rainy Liu (https://boyan.cloud/
s/kxTBSdDmLi2Gcd7) (2021-06-01)

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