He who helped 1.4 billion people eat their food, left today

The legend left us.

According to the People’s Daily, Yuan Longping, the father of hybrid rice and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, passed away today at the age of 91.

For Chinese people, Yuan Longping is not just a story in textbooks, but also a real change in people's lives. Every piece of rice and every bite of rice is related to the continuous struggle of Academician Yuan Longping.

As an agricultural scientist who has been rooted in rice for half his life, Yuan Longping and his team have successfully increased the rice yield per mu from 300 kg per mu to 1000 kg per mu. The yield has increased more than three times. The yield per mu of the third-generation double-hybrid rice has even reached 1530.76 kg.

The hybrid rice he studied throughout his life has also expanded from China to the world. The United States, India, Vietnam and other countries and regions have already planted hybrid rice, with an annual planting area of ​​8 million hectares.

Looking back on the life of Academician Yuan Longping, walking in the fields improved the living environment of a generation and kept hunger away from the people.

Yuan Longping was born in Beijing on September 7, 1930, and then moved to many cities across the country. During that turbulent era, Academician Yuan Longping witnessed the founding of the motherland and was also one of the important builders.

There were famines in many parts of the country in 1960, and people’s desperation happened from time to time. Yuan Longping and his students were the same. Once Yuan Longping even witnessed the death of someone on the street because of lack of food. It also made him realize the importance of food.

As an agronomist, he is determined to change this situation. During an accidental inspection in the field, Yuan Longping found a unique rice plant. Compared with other rice plants, this plant was not only taller and fuller, which made him immediately The interest came, and I quickly studied this particular strain of rice.

It was the seeds of this natural hybrid rice that gave him inspiration and proposed a new breeding method—hybrid rice. Two different varieties of rice were crossed to retain the excellent characteristics of the original varieties and promote the increase in rice production.

At first, hybrid rice was not fully recognized, but Yuan Longping still insisted. He once said: In the practice of researching hybrid rice, I deeply realized that as a scientific and technological worker, one should respect authority but not superstitiously believe in authority. Read books, but not superstitious, nor afraid of cynicism or unconventionality.

The final result is gratifying. The yield of hybrid rice far exceeds that of ordinary rice. In recent years, it has even exceeded the yield of 1530.76 kg per mu. With the increasing production, the reputation of hybrid rice has spread farther and farther. With the help of my country, countries and regions such as Vietnam and India have already used hybrid rice for production.

According to Xinhuanet, as early as 2004, the area of ​​hybrid rice planted in Vietnam reached 650,000 hectares, compared to 560,000 hectares in India. Compared with local varieties, the output increased by 1.5 to 2.5 tons per hectare. Academician Yuan Longping not only feeds the domestic people. It has made people all over the world one step closer to being full.

For this reason, Academician Yuan Longping is honored as the "father of hybrid rice" and has won many awards including the National Science and Technology Progress Award. In 1999, the International Small Celestial Body Nomenclature Committee also named a small planet "Yuan Longping Star".

In his later years, academician Yuan Longping’s physical limitations prevented him from doing everything by himself and frequently doing research in the fields, but he was still using another way to contribute to agricultural development. Yuan Longping, who was 90 years old last year, said in a live broadcast: I hope more. Many young people are engaged in modern agriculture.

Modern agriculture is high-tech agriculture, not the agriculture that used to face the loess and back to the sky. Hope that the majority of knowledgeable young people will devote themselves to agricultural research!

Intelligence, automation, and high-tech have become synonymous with modern agriculture. We have also reported many times. For example, the process of pesticide spraying. In the past, most of the pesticide spraying process was manually sprayed. However, because the human skin is easily contaminated by pesticides, this occupation Compared with other industries, it will be more difficult and riskier.

But nowadays, agricultural drones have become more and more common. Not only are the spraying efficiency high, but the rate of return is also gradually increasing, which is based on the growing yield per mu of hybrid rice.

There are also cases where we reported that two young people managed 3,000 acres of cotton land through technology and generated more than one million income.

Academician Yuan Longping’s appeal is to change people’s inherent understanding of agriculture on the one hand. Modern agriculture is not as painful as imagined, and income generation is also much higher than imagined; on the other hand, it is hoped that through his appeal, more people with technical foundation and dare to innovate Young people enter the agricultural industry to promote the development of the industry.

Today, Academician Yuan Longping left this world, but he still lives in our hearts, just like the shining "Yuan Longping Star" in space.

#Welcome to follow Aifaner's official WeChat account: Aifaner (WeChat ID: ifanr), more exciting content will be provided to you as soon as possible.

Ai Faner | Original link · View comments · Sina Weibo