Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – For Asian people who account for 60% of the world's total population, rice is an irreplaceable commodity. Every country has a large dependence on rice and wild rice. In Indonesia alone, there is an opinion that “you are not full if you haven't eaten rice.”
Behind the eagerness of Asian people to eat rice products, there is the cold hand of a Chinese farmer named Yuan Longping. He was the key figure behind the discovery of new rice varieties which allowed rice production to increase many times to meet market needs.
The story of this discovery began with Yuan's concern over the great famine at the end of the 1960s. At that time, millions of Chinese people starved to death due to the failure of agricultural production.
Yuan, who feels lucky to be alive, doesn't want to see this happen again in the future. As a result, he rushed to develop a new type of rice that could grow faster and survive on less fertile land, but could produce more harvests.
Logically, Yuan's idea cannot be accepted. However, in fact he was able to create rice varieties like that in the 1970s. The way to do it is to quote South China Morning Post, is by cross-breeding sterile male rice seeds with other rice seeds.
This variety was later named hybrid rice and became a new breakthrough apart from conventional rice planting techniques. This discovery was quickly implemented on a mass scale in 1976 and proved successful in increasing rice production by 20% -30% more than usual.
In notes New York Post, hybrid rice has initially been successfully planted on 16 million hectares of land, or the entirety of rice fields in China, where fertility is only 9%. In fact, the government said Yuan's discovery had succeeded in feeding the entire population of China.
Interestingly, this discovery was not patented by Yuan, although on the other hand a patent is very possible and could make you rich. Yuan ultimately chose to give his findings to the International Rice Research Institute voluntarily so that all countries in the world could implement hybrid rice.
Apart from that, he also taught farmers in many countries how to apply hybrid rice. On this basis, countries such as Australia, England, Egypt, Italy, Japan, the US and Indonesia can implement hybrid rice without having to pay a patent to Yuan or the Chinese government.
Since then he has become famous and has been awarded many international awards. Many also consider him a hero in the agricultural sector. China specifically nicknamed him the “Father of Hybrids.” Thanks to his findings, many countries experienced an increase in rice production on an extraordinary scale. One of them is China, which occupies the top tier of rice producing countries.
However, Yuan's great work had to stop on May 22 2021 after he died at the age of 92 due to illness.
[Gambas:Video CNBC]
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