Record-Breaking Rice Yields in Sichuan Surpass Yuan Longping's Goal: Super Hybrid Rice and Saline-Alkaline Resistant Varieties Shine

Sichuan province has set a new world record for rice production, achieving an output of almost 18.8 metric tons per hectare of super hybrid rice. This remarkable feat surpasses the target set by the late 'father of hybrid rice,' Yuan Longping, in 2018.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs' prescribed method for estimating super hybrid rice yields, an expert team from five institutions, including the China National Rice Research Institute and the Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, conducted a harvest on Saturday. They randomly chose three plots in the demonstration base in Dechang county, with the No 1 plot producing a staggering 19.7 tons of output per hectare. The average output across the three plots reached almost 18.8 metric tons per hectare.

'Based on the consistent progress in the past five years, we have unprecedentedly exceeded the target of 18 tons per hectare, an unfinished wish for Yuan,' said Xu Jingbo, Party chief of the Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Center.

Yuan, who is renowned for developing the first hybrid rice strain, set the 18-ton per hectare target in 2018, when the super hybrid rice was introduced to the Dechang base. Despite his passing in May 2021, his legacy continues to inspire agricultural advancements.

The demonstration base planted 7.3 hectares of super hybrid rice this year. Workers began raising rice seedlings on March 20 and transplanted them from April 24 to May 5. Li Jianwu, a researcher from the Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Center, attributes the record output to the variety of super hybrid rice used, specifically Liliangyou 8022. This variety boasts strong lodging resistance, huge spikes, and a greater number of grains.

In a separate development, rice resistant to saline-alkaline land planted at a demonstration base of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps has achieved a new record yield of 8.6 tons per hectare. This success comes after experts from Hunan and Xinjiang worked to reduce the saline and alkaline levels in the soil and select suitable rice crops for the challenging environment.

The demonstration land in Alar city covers more than 712 hectares and initially had very few plants due to the high saline and alkaline content. Chen Wenfu, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and head of the expert team, hailed this achievement as a successful application of Chinese rice crop selection and cultivation techniques resistant to saline-alkaline soil.

China possesses approximately 100 million hectares of saline-alkaline land, with one-third potentially suitable for arable development. The country has 11 rice crops that have passed national tests and can be planted on such land, with an accumulative saline-alkaline area of more than 66,700 hectares planted in over 10 provincial regions.

To further accelerate the development of saline-alkaline land, the national saline-alkaline resistant rice technology innovation center was established by 11 institutions. The center's goal is to cultivate more high-yield crops suitable for saline-alkaline land, aiming to achieve an additional yield of 30 million tons of crops and feed 80 million people by planting crops on 6.67 million hectares of such land.