In 1960, rare natural disasters and man-made calamities brought about a severe food famine. One by one, patients with swollen bodies and sallow complexions collapsed... Yuan Longping's five-foot frame directly experienced the agony of hunger.
Witnessing this harsh reality, Yuan Longping could not sleep, tossing and turning. He recalled the old society, where people suffered under the exploitation and oppression of the ruling class, endured the pain of war, lacked clothing and food, and were displaced. Today, the people were masters of their own destiny, yet they still had not escaped the threat of hunger. He resolved to fully utilize his intellect and apply his academic expertise to quickly develop new rice varieties capable of yielding over 800, 1,000, or even 2,000 catties per mu, dramatically increasing grain production and overcoming hunger through agricultural science and technology.
Yuan Longping endorsed the following formula: Knowledge + Sweat + Inspiration + Opportunity = Success.
Drawing on his deep understanding of genetics, he carefully observed and conducted statistical analyses on degenerated plants in his experimental fields. He not only demonstrated that the exceptionally tall rice plant stood out like "a crane among chickens" and was a "naturally hybrid rice," but also, from the excellent growth performance of its first generation, fully proved the obvious phenomenon of hybrid vigor in rice. The experimental results convinced him that research on hybrid rice held a bright future!
However, hybrid rice was a global challenge. Since rice is a hermaphroditic plant that self-pollinates, it is extremely difficult to manually remove the stamens flower by flower to perform hybridization. Therefore, it was necessary to cultivate a rice plant with sterile stamens, known as a "male sterile line," which could then be crossed with other varieties. This was a difficult global problem. Undeterred by the difficulty, Yuan Longping believed that the original parent of a male sterile line could be a naturally mutated male sterile plant, which might also exist naturally. China possesses numerous varieties of wild and cultivated rice, harboring rich seed resources and serving as a kingdom of rice freedom. "If foreigners haven't succeeded, it doesn't mean Chinese people cannot."
Yuan Longping set off into the vast green sea of rice paddies to search for this never-before-seen rice plant with male sterility, unreported in both Chinese and foreign literature. Day after day passed as Yuan Longping, under the scorching sun and with his feet in mud, bent over and examined each ear of rice. "Hard work pays off." Finally, on the fourteenth day, he discovered a plant with peculiar traits whose stamen anthers failed to split open. Yuan Longping was overjoyed.
From June 1964 to July 1965, he and his wife Deng Ze found six more male sterile plants. At maturity, they separately harvested seeds from the first generation of these naturally pollinated male sterile materials. After two years of experimentation and scientific data analysis and organization, he wrote his first important paper, "The Male Sterility of Rice," published in the fourth issue of Volume 17 of *Science Bulletin* in 1966. The paper also predicted that through further breeding, it would be possible to obtain a male sterile line, a maintainer line (to preserve the male sterile trait in offspring), and a restorer line (to restore male fertility), achieving the "three-line system" and making it possible to utilize the first-generation advantage of hybrid rice, which would bring large-scale, substantial increases in agricultural production. The publication of this important paper was regarded by some peers as "sounding the bugle for the second green revolution."
After another eight difficult years overcoming "the five hurdles" (increasing male sterility rate, achieving the three-line system, stabilizing fertility, harnessing hybrid vigor, and seed propagation), seed formulation was successfully achieved in 1974, followed by the organization of advantage evaluation. In 1975, with the support of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee and government, large-scale seed production succeeded, preparing the seeds for large-scale promotion the following year and bringing this research achievement into the stage of widespread application.
In the winter of 1975, the State Council made the decision to rapidly expand trials and extensively promote hybrid rice. The nation invested substantial manpower, material resources, and financial resources, propagating and producing seeds three generations per year to achieve the fastest possible promotion. In 1976, demonstration planting covered 2.08 million mu, and hybrid rice began to be applied nationwide. By 1988, the national hybrid rice area reached 194 million mu, accounting for 39.6% of total rice area, while its total output contributed over 60% of the national rice production. Over ten years, the cumulative national planting area of hybrid rice reached 1.256 billion mu, increasing rice production by over 100 billion kilograms and adding a total output value of 28 billion yuan, achieving tremendous economic and social benefits. The public widely praised that "two 'Pings' solved the food problem": one was the high-level policy of the Central Party Committee, and the other was Yuan Longping's hybrid rice. With simple words, people expressed the heartfelt thoughts of hundreds of millions of Chinese farmers.
With the successful breeding and nationwide large-scale promotion of hybrid rice, Yuan Longping gained immense fame. Facing achievements and honors, Yuan Longping openly acknowledged the shortcomings of the hybrid rice developed at that stage as the "three excesses and three deficiencies": "strong initial growth but weak sustained growth; excessive tillering but insufficient panicle formation; large panicles but poor grain setting." He organized his assistants to address these issues from both breeding and cultivation perspectives.
In the early 1980s, facing global famine, Yuan Longping conceived another astonishing idea, boldly proposing the research topic of super-high-yield breeding of hybrid rice to address hunger on a larger scale.
In 1985, driven by a strong sense of responsibility, Yuan Longping published the article "Discussion on Super-High-Yield Breeding of Hybrid Rice," proposing four approaches for selecting and breeding strong, high-yield combinations. The most labor-intensive approach was cultivating nuclear-cytoplasmic hybrids. However, years of breeding practice failed to produce combinations meeting production requirements. He decisively and swiftly shifted from nuclear-cytoplasmic hybrid research to explore new, more promising research fields.
With rich imagination, keen intuition, and bold creative spirit, Yuan Longping carefully summarized a century of crop breeding history, 20 years of experience with "three-line hybrid rice" breeding, and the abundant breeding materials at his disposal. In 1987, he proposed the "Strategic Vision for Hybrid Rice Breeding," a far-sighted plan outlining two strategic development stages for hybrid rice: the first stage, primarily using the three-line method for inter-varietal hybrid vigor utilization; the second stage, primarily using the two-line method for inter-subspecific (indica-japonica) hybrid vigor utilization; and the third stage, primarily using the one-line method for distant hybrid vigor utilization. This marked another new peak in the development of Yuan Longping's hybrid rice theory.
Guided by Yuan Longping's strategic thinking, following Shi Ming-Song from Hubei's discovery in 1973 of a sterile photoperiod-sensitive nuclear sterile material in a natural population of late japonica rice "Nongken 58," on July 16, 1987, Deng Hua-Feng, an assistant to Li Bi-Hu, found a photoperiod-sensitive sterile rice plant in indica rice three-line breeding materials at Anjiang Agricultural School. After two years and three generations of异地 (different location) propagation and observation, the material showed uniform and consistent agronomic traits, with both the sterile plant rate and sterility degree reaching 100%. The sterile period was stably over 50 days in Anjiang, and fertility conversion was distinct and synchronized. This new achievement opened a new chapter for hybrid rice transitioning from the "three-line method" to the "two-line method." Progress in research on rice "apomixis" also marked a promising step forward for the one-line method's utilization of distant hybrid vigor. Yuan Longping was filled with confidence in the future of hybrid rice research.
As hybrid rice underwent trials and cultivation in countries worldwide, it attracted global attention. In recent years, Yuan Longping has been invited to conduct lectures, impart technology, attend academic conferences, or engage in technical cooperation research in eight countries— the Philippines, the United States, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Egypt, and Australia—participating in 19 international academic activities. Since Yuan Longping's hybrid rice achievement won China's first Special Invention Award after the founding of the nation in 1981, he consecutively received three international scientific grand prizes within just four years from 1985 to 1988. Dr. Swaminathan, Director of the International Rice Research Institute and former Indian Minister of Agriculture, highly praised: "We call Mr. Yuan Longping the 'Father of Hybrid Rice' because his achievements are not only a pride for China but also for the world; his accomplishments have brought blessings to humanity."
Yuan Longping, coming from the remote Anjiang Agricultural School in Hunan Province, evolved from a young teacher at a rural agricultural school into a world-renowned figure, ascending to the throne of the "Father of Hybrid Rice." The cause of hybrid rice research is flourishing and advancing rapidly toward the new strategic vision conceived by Yuan Longping!