Yuan Longping Dies, Scientist Whose Rice Research Helped Feed World

An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press: Yuan Longping, a Chinese scientist who developed higher-yield rice varieties that helped feed people around the world, died Saturday at a hospital in the southern city of Changsha, the Xinhua News agency reported. He was 90.

Yuan spent his life researching rice and was a household name in China, known by the nickname 'Father of Hybrid Rice.' Worldwide, a fifth of all rice now comes from species created by hybrid rice following Yuan's breakthrough discoveries, according to the website of the World Food Prize, which he won in 2004...

It was in the 1970s when Yuan achieved the breakthroughs that would make him a household name. He developed a hybrid strain of rice that recorded an annual yield 20% higher than existing varieties — meaning it could feed an extra 70 million people a year, according to Xinhua...

Yuan and his team worked with dozens of countries around the world to address issues of food security as well as malnutrition.

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