'Father of hybrid rice' passes away at 91 (3)

Yuan Longping is dubbed the "Father of Hybrid Rice", honored with the Medal of the Republic. [Photo/Xinhua]

From China to the world

While food shortages have long been consigned to China's past, Yuan, the famine fighter, has a much bigger ambition -- to save the world from starvation.

Since the 1980s, Yuan's team has offered training courses in dozens of countries in Africa, the Americas and Asia -- providing a robust food source in areas with a high risk of famine.

Globally, more than 820 million people were hungry in 2018, according to a UN report. And if hybrid rice is planted in half of the world's 147 million hectares of paddy fields, the additional yield alone can feed another 500 million people, said Yuan.

Yuan's team has continued to make new breakthroughs. Yuan's team was invited to make a trial plantation of the saline-alkaline tolerant rice in experimental fields in Dubai in January 2018, achieving huge success. China's export of saline-alkaline tolerant rice and the technique has been eyed as a way to combat the world's food insecurity.

From having enough to eat to eating well

Now the focus of Yuan's hybrid rice project has changed from increasing output to green and sustainable development.

In September 2017, a strain of low-cadmium indica rice developed by Yuan's team and the Hunan provincial academy of agricultural sciences was able to reduce the average amount of cadmium in rice by more than 90 percent in areas suffering from heavy metal pollution.