At 13:07 on May 22, 2021, Yuan Longping, winner of the "Order of the Republic", academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, director of the National Hybrid Rice Engineering and Technology Research Center, and former vice chairman of the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, died in Changsha at the age of 91 due to multiple organ failure. 1
"Yuan Longping is a real cultivator." This is the evaluation of the China Science and Technology Award Committee. "He looks more like an authentic Hunan farmer." This is the praise of farmer friends. He often said, "I am not at home in the test field, not in the test field, just on the way to the test field." People see the image of Elder Yuan, always holding his trouser leg under the rice field, whether it is sowing season or harvest season. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China, Yuan Longping was awarded the "Order of the Republic". But even on the day of winning the country's highest honor, Elder Yuan went down to the ground to check the "third generation of hybrid rice" seed production, holding the rice and saying: "The flowers bloom well." Behind the achievements and honors is the down-to-earth struggle, the innovation that dares to be the first, and the perseverance of bowing down.
1
Contrary to what many people think, the dark-skinned Yuan Longping is not from a peasant background. His father, Yuan Xinglie, was a graduate of Southeast University and had served in the Nationalist government, and his mother was a highly qualified student at a church school and spoke extremely fluent English. In 1930, Yuan Longping was born in Peking Union Hospital, and his father named him "Longping".
Before coming of age, Yuan Longping followed his family from Beiping to Tianjin, from Jiangxi to Hubei, from Chongqing to Nanjing. As a child, he did not know the taste of sorrow, lively and mischievous. Seeing my grandmother's hookah grunt and take a curious sip, choking on it so much that she couldn't speak. The grandmother bumped into him and knocked him the head. Among his brothers and sisters, he was the most playful, and when he was studying in Chongqing, he once encountered an air raid siren and ran to the Jialing River to swim. I happened to be seen by my father with a telescope, and it was a good meal to come home.
Yuan Longping was in his mother's arms
At that time, he read books, and it was all based on interest. If you like it, you are serious, and if you don't like it, you are perfunctory. Once in a math and science class, the teacher talked about "negative negative positive", Yuan Longping was confused, asked the teacher: "Why is negative negative positive?" The teacher said, "You don't have to worry about that much, you just write down the formula." Yuan Longping felt that it was so stupid to remember, it was too unreasonable, and he suddenly lost interest in mathematics.
Interestingly, many years later, he and the mathematician Wu Wenjun won the first national supreme science and technology award at the same time, Yuan Longping mentioned this matter to Wu Wenjun, Wu Wenjun smiled: "It is precisely because of curiosity, I want to understand the truth, so I study mathematics." He laughed loudly: "Or you are strong, facing the difficulties, I can't understand it and give up!" ”
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, from one city to another, although the young Yuan Longping did not understand the hardships of livelihood and had a great heart for play, he could always see the Japanese plane overhead, see the Chinese fleeing with his family along the road, and see the hunger, famine, and devastation of the land, and there would always be a wave of pain in his heart.
Years later, his heart would still be tight when he thought of the bloody corpses he had seen on the way to escape. At the same time, as a young man, he also understood the truth of the weak eating the strong.
"If a nation wants to be free from humiliation, it has no choice but to be strong."
2
Speaking of learning to farm, it is a beautiful misunderstanding. In the first grade of elementary school, the teacher took the whole class to visit a capitalist garden, full of fruits, fragrant peach and plum, colorful flowers paved the path, and bunches of sparkling grapes hanging on the vines. In Yuan Longping's eyes, this is simply a fairy tale world.
Later, he watched Chaplin's movie "Modern Times", only to see the grapes hanging outside the window, Chaplin reached out and picked them to eat, thirsty, called a cow to the door, immediately can drink fresh. At that time, Yuan Longping felt that Xuenong was really very happy.
Until I really understood the hardships of the peasants, I found that it was not the same thing at all: "I am free and loose by nature, and I yearn for all the pastoral beauty and agronomic beauty, and as soon as I saw that the capitalist's gardening farm was so beautiful, I thought that I could work in it in the future, and when I really learned farming, I knew how difficult it was to cultivate the land." ”
When he was in middle school, Yuan Longping was indeed free and loose enough. The quilt is not carefully folded, and the morning exercise is not loved. The subject you like is 90, and the one you don't like is 60. In 1947, Hubei Province held a provincial sports games, and he rushed to register. The teacher looked at it: "You are too small, go back!" "Everyone's team was selected, and as a result, before leaving, he didn't take class and sneaked into the team." When we got to the arena, the teacher smiled and said, "Since you're here, you're going." Unexpectedly, he took the first place in the 100m and 400m in the preliminaries, and finally won two silver medals.
When applying for the university, Yuan Longping remembered the countryside he longed for in his childhood and said to his parents: "I want to learn farming." The mother listened and was shocked: "Silly child, how hard is it to learn to be a farmer, do you think it is fun?" But Yuan Longping had to learn from the dead and put forward the big truth: "Eating is the most important thing in the world, if you don't learn farming, how can human beings survive?" ”
In the end, the father respected his choice.
Entering the school, visiting the real farm, seeing the farmers facing the loess with their backs to the sky, and the harsh farming environment, Yuan Longping realized that the "beauty of the countryside" was pure imagination. Fortunately, at that age, he was ambitious, and seeing the suffering of the peasants' survival, he secretly resolved to do something for the peasants of this country.
Yuan Longping's university diploma
Yuan Longping studied genetic breeding. As soon as he had time, he went to the library and read a large number of Chinese and foreign agricultural magazines. In his extensive reading, he came into contact with the genetics of Mendel and Morgan. Whenever you encounter something you don't understand, go to the teacher for advice. At that time, he did not realize that it was this visit to the door that laid a solid foundation for his future achievements.
3
After graduation, Yuan Longping was assigned to teach at Anjiang Agricultural School. The agricultural school is located in a remote area, and before he left, the leader told him: "Classmate, it is relatively remote, a lone lamp shines for life, you must be mentally prepared." ”
When I arrived at An Jiang, it was actually not as bad as I thought. Away from the city, the mountains and rivers are beautiful, not stained with dust, and there is a river flowing outside the school, just enough to swim. Before arriving in Anjiang, Yuan Longping bought a violin with a month's salary. In order to be able to create a little happiness and fun for yourself.
Unexpectedly, in 1960, the Great Famine came. In difficult times, everyone eats with the "double steaming method". Steam the rice twice, put the soda, and steam a large bowl of rice. Can eat into the stomach, can not stand at all. Yuan Longping could not forget the pain and fear brought about by hunger all his life: "I just finished eating, my stomach was hungry again, and I wanted to eat all day long." Sometimes it is replaced by chaff and the more you eat, the hungrier you get. I couldn't eat enough at all, and my feet were weak and weak. In the winter, at night, after the feet are heated by the bed roasting fire, they are put into the bed, and they are cold again, and they are still cold the next morning. Without food, there is no energy in the body. It was a really hard day. ”
This famine made Yuan Longping set a lofty and lifelong ambition: we must solve the food security problem of Chinese.
Long before that, Yuan Longping had done some research. At that time, everyone generally used the "asexual hybridization" of the Soviet Union Lysenko, which was grafting to put it bluntly. Yuan Longping grafted tomatoes onto potatoes, and in the first year, with great success, potatoes were dug out of the soil and tomatoes were harvested on the stems. In the second year, the harvested seeds are planted on the ground, of course, no new species can grow. But as recently as 1957, Yuan Longping saw a report in the "Reference News" that the genetic code of the DNA double helix structure won the Nobel Prize.
He immediately thought of mendel and Morgan's genetics.
Realizing that this was real science, he went to Beijing at his own expense, found a genetics expert, and consulted the development of genetics abroad. This made him realize that it was feasible to use genetic theory to conduct breeding experiments. At first, he wanted to study sweet potatoes, but his compatriots told him: "Whoever eats that every day, that is the addition of rice, and he can't stand hunger when he eats, so he still has to eat rice." ”
Yuan Longping felt that what he said was reasonable, stayed in the library of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and read a lot of foreign language materials and journals. Only then did we know that hybrid sorghum and hybrid corn in the United States, Mexico and other countries have long begun to produce, and only the hybrid technology of rice has not yet broken through.
Okay, then specialize in rice.
4
One day in July 1961, Yuan Longping went to the experimental field of the agricultural school to select seeds. Inadvertently, he found a rice plant that "stood out from the crowd". The spikes are large and the grains are full. Yuan Longping picked a spike with his hand, and there were as many as 230 grains! Yuan Longping thought to himself, if this plant can be preserved and bred, wouldn't it be possible to increase the production of countless grains?
The following spring, he sowed the seeds, and was disappointed, looking tall and short, and none of them grew as well as the earliest one. After returning disappointed, Yuan Longping repeatedly pondered the mystery, studied the proportion of rice plants in the test field, and finally came to a conclusion: rice has a hybrid advantage, and the rice that stands out from the flock is natural hybrid rice. Since natural hybrid rice has such a growth advantage, artificial hybrid rice must be able to increase production in large quantities.
Yuan Longping saw the natural rice plant and questioned the theory. He visited experts, rummaged through the data, and finally determined that this growth advantage could be used artificially. To take advantage of this advantage, the first thing to do is to find "natural male sterile rice".
In the summer of 1964, Yuan Longping began a long journey to find rice. Every day after breakfast, he went down to the field, took two water bottles and two steamed buns, and found it until 4 p.m. before he would go home. The sun was shining above, soaking in the water below, eating poorly, and soon suffering from gastrointestinal diseases. Even so, he did not give up looking. This kind of search, can be described as a needle in a haystack, to use a 5 times magnifying glass, look at the rice plants one by one. The theoretical probability of finding it is one in fifty thousand. Sometimes stomach pain is found, the body convulses, Yuan Longping is still insisting.
After half a month of hard fighting, nearly 140,000 rice plants were observed, and when the first plant was found, Yuan Longping strengthened his belief. After observing hundreds of thousands of rice plants for two consecutive years, he, his students and wife finally found 6 male sterile rice plants. After the successful cultivation of "male sterile lines", in February 1966, in the Journal of science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yuan Longping published his first paper, "Male Infertility of Rice", which discussed the basis of rice hybridization.
Manuscript of the thesis
5
During the Cultural Revolution, Yuan Longping attracted great attention from the central government because of his papers, and his research on rice hybridization was not affected.
Yuan Longping set up a research group. After repeated cultivation of male sterile lines, 700 seedlings entered the Anjiang experimental field. Yuan Longping looked forward to the sweat of the whole team every day, but no one expected that on the night of May 18, 1968, there was a sudden incident of artificial destruction of seedlings. After a heavy rain, Yuan Longping was afraid of the damage to the seedlings, so he went to the test field early the next morning, and when he arrived at the scene, all the seedlings were pulled out!
Just when he was desperate, Yuan Longping found 5 floating seedlings in a well, and immediately jumped down to salvage them.
Without these 5 remaining seedlings, Yuan Longping and all the staff members' 4 years of hard work would be destroyed. To this day, who destroyed the seedlings is still an open case.
Later, Yuan Longping's students said in an interview: "I think it should be done by people in the industry, the other party is uprooted and destroyed, the technique is very clever, and I don't want to leave him with any opportunity." ”
6
In 1968, Yuan Longping and two students traveled from north to south, from Hebei to Hainan, and did not return home for seven Spring Festivals, and began an extremely time-consuming breeding experiment. However, no matter how hard they tried and how much effort they put into it, the results of the test were always unsatisfactory.
Yuan Longping realized that the materials for the hybridization test were all cultivated rice, and the relatives were too close, and the genetic traits would decline, and wild rice should be replaced. Eventually, in Hainan, they found a perfect male sterile line of wild rice. Yuan Longping named it "Wild Barnyard".
It became the mother of all hybrid rice.
In 1973, after continuous breeding, Yuan Longping and his team finally cultivated a batch of hybrid rice with gratifying growth. But on the day of the rice harvest, everyone was dumbfounded. The whole batch of hybrid rice, there is not much rice, but the straw grows very tall.
Yuan Longping was not in a hurry: "On the surface, we failed, but in essence, we were successful. Whether long rice or straw is just a technical problem, at least for now, it can be proved that the hybrid advantage is fully achievable, so we should not give up. ”
The scene of the discovery of wild rice "wild barnyard" in Sanya, Hainan
The words were sonorous and powerful, and the research project was able to continue. For Yuan Longping, there are difficulties, that is a matter of course, under the heavens where there is such an easy thing to succeed. He didn't say much, didn't care about the outside world's doubts, and continued to bury his head in breeding. A year later, the new seeds proved that all the efforts had not been in vain, and the hybrid advantage was indeed transferred to the rice. Yield per mu of land increased by 50-100 kg.
In 1974, Yuan Longping became China's first strong advantage group "Nanyou No. 2". Both crops increased rice yields by more than 30% compared with conventional rice. Subsequently, he designed a new cultivation model and a method of catching pollen, which increased the seed yield by nearly 8 times.
In 1976, the country tried to plant hybrid rice in a large area, 2.08 million mu of hybrid rice, and the yield increase was all more than 20%. Hybrid rice areas expanded rapidly, and by 1988 half of the country's rice fields were growing hybrid rice. In the past 10 years, the total area of hybrid rice cultivated by Yuan Longping has reached 1.05 billion mu, which has made a very great contribution to the increase of rice production and income in China.
Yuan Longping won China's first special invention award.
7
After conquering the "three-line hybridization", he also studied the "two-line hybridization", and stuck it in the field year after year, raising the yield of rice from 600 kilograms to 700, 900, 1000... Far behind other countries.
Inspired by him, more excellent hybrid rice appeared across the country. According to the International Rice Research Institute, 58 percent of Rice fields in China are hybrid rice, compared with 40 percent in the United States and about 8 percent on average in several countries in Southeast Asia. It is no wonder that some people say that Yuan Longping has fed nearly 200 million people with hybrid rice technology.
There are asteroids named after him, and the World Food Prize and the Wolf Prize in Israel are also awarded to him. 23 international awards, countless scientific titles, reputation is gradually rising, more and more praise are gathered under his name. Yuan Longping said: "In terms of hybrid rice, I have done some work, but the final result is the efforts of the vast number of scientific and technological personnel and grass-roots people, and the credit cannot be attributed to me alone." I just contributed a little to Chinese eat, and other praise, I can't accept. ”
In the early years of the "Face to Face" program, the reporter asked him: "What is the motivation that makes you constantly overcome difficulties and increase production again and again, don't you feel tired?" ”
Yuan Longping said: "The pursuit of career is to be happy in suffering, agricultural science and technology work is very bitter, all day in the sun, in the mud field." Because there is hope, there will be good varieties, so the joy is in the bitterness. If there is no hope, blind and aimless, there will be no fun. ”
Yuan Longping's hope is his dream of cooling under the grass: rice is as high as sorghum, rice ears are more than a foot long, two feet long, and the grains, peanuts and rice are so big that they can sit under the rice to cool off. He said that unless he couldn't see it and couldn't walk, he would keep doing it.
For him, shimoda work was a top priority. Once, a program made a really good documentary for him. When the reporter came to the door and asked him how he looked. Yuan Longping took a puff of his cigarette and said lightly, "I didn't look at it, I didn't want to see it too much, it was too time-consuming to see that, and I had to go to the field most of the time." ”
8
As a national treasure-level figure, Yuan Longping never had any shelf on his body. In 2016, he won the first Lui Che Woo Prize - World Civilization Award, and when the thank-you speech read to the second page, the paper was stuck and could not be turned over, and Yuan Longping muttered a sentence "Trouble is dead". This sentence was amplified by the microphone, and everyone laughed at his true temperament.
The Lui Zhihe Prize was awarded more than 17 million yuan, and Yuan Longping took it all to support agricultural development. Afterwards, there was a Western media research, he wore a suit when he received the award, but 500 yuan. These are the more expensive clothes he wears. The Polo shirt he wore when he went to the field was 45 yuan, and the shoes on his feet were only 200 yuan.
In 2001, Yuan was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science by the University of Chinese, Hong Kong. Usually dressed very casually, he did not lead the belt, in order to attend the formal occasion, he and the people with him on the street to buy a tie. His companions advised him to buy a good one, but he was too expensive to buy it, so he dragged his companion to the stall and bought a tie of 20 Hong Kong dollars.
Cao Hongqiu, a Farmer in Hunan Province who was born in the famine years, grew hybrid rice and made a fortune. Out of gratitude and respect for Yuan Longping, he had to make a white jade statue for him. He wrote a letter to Yuan Longping, hoping to get his picture.
Yuan Longping said in his reply: "I have received this affection of yours, but it is right to make a little contribution to the people and the country." As for the statue, I really can't stand your love. Hope you respect my opinion and forgive me for not sending you photos. ”
9
I deal with rice every day, but in Yuan Longping's world, rice is not the only one. Volleyball, swimming, and violin have been Yuan Longping's favorite three things for many years.
People are boring, they don't live. Volleyball and swimming are the best ways for Yuan Longping to strengthen his body. In his 70s, he walked in the fields faster than a young man. As for the violin, it is used to cultivate the body and mind.
In 2017, Yuan Longping's rice grew well, once again setting a record for production. He said: "In the past, the standard of living was poor, what we pursued was high yield and high yield, but now there is more and more grain, we must not only raise the yield, but also do better and better quality." "People asked him when he planned to retire. Yuan Longping smiled slightly, and everything was in silence.
On May 22, 2021, Elder Yuan left us forever. The public name "People's Daily Review" wrote in the nostalgia article: Yuan Long usually said that he had two dreams, one was the dream of cooling under the grass, and the other was the dream of hybrid rice covering the world. Today, the dream of high rice yields has become a reality, and hybrid rice is also cultivated in large areas in India, Vietnam, the Philippines, the United States, Brazil and other countries. In order to realize the dream, Elder Yuan and scientists have been working hard and have never stopped exploring.
After Yuan Longping's death, people mourned one after another, and some netizens sighed: "I have eaten all my meals at noon." ”
Elder Yuan went all the way
The author of this article: Du Gongzi, reprinted with permission of the public account "Once a Day" (WeChat ID: yryd115), has been abridged.