The deeds of Academician Yuan Longping, the "father of hybrid rice", can be said to be a household name in the land of China. Interestingly, when his granddaughter was young, she didn't know how great her grandfather really was.
When Yuan Longping's granddaughter was in school, an interesting incident once happened. One day, the teacher asked the students what their grandfather did. The little girl thought for a long time, and replied solemnly, grandpa is looking at the weather forecast.
The teacher knew the identity of Yuan Longping's granddaughter, and was stunned for a moment after hearing this answer, and then couldn't help laughing. After this interesting anecdote spread, everyone couldn't help but sigh at Yuan Lao's hard work while joking about fairy tales.
Why was Yuan Longping, who is unparalleled in the country, mistaken by his little granddaughter for "watching weather forecasts"? Behind the anecdote, what kind of good quality does Yuan Lao show?
To answer these questions, we have to start with the life of Yuan Lao. Yuan Longping was born in Beijing in 1930. His family is a genuine scholarly family, his father graduated from the well-known university Southeast University, and his mother came from a literati family.
Yuan Longping, who was born in this way, almost no one could have imagined that he would deal with fields and crops for the rest of his life in the future. Yuan Lao's parents' expectation for their son is to become a doctor or engineer when he grows up.
But the young Yuan Longping has different expectations for his future. Growing up during the war years, he had seen the devastation of famine on the people, so he set up an ambition since he was a child to let the people of his motherland eat and drink in the future.
With this grand wish, when Yuan Longping applied for university in 1949, he chose Southwest Agricultural College without telling his parents and became a glorious agricultural student.
Yuan Lao's road to agronomy has taken the first step. However, during his time at school, there were two episodes that almost made him change careers halfway through, and he said goodbye to agriculture from then on.
The first episode was the outbreak of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. Yuan Longping was inspired by the heroic volunteers and planned to join the army to defend the country, so he signed up for the air force selection in 1952.
Yuan Longping, who has excellent physical fitness, was soon successfully selected. However, on the eve of his preparation to report to the air force, the central authorities issued a new rule: All students who continue to study are not allowed to enlist in the army.
At that time, the central government issued this new regulation because the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea was nearing its end, and the delay in college students' studies outweighed the losses. Yuan Longping therefore missed an opportunity to put on a military uniform and continued to stay in school.
After regretting bidding farewell to the military dream, Yuan Longping's college life had a second episode. Because of his outstanding swimming ability, he has a good chance of being selected for the national team and becoming a professional swimmer.
It's just that in the later selection competition, Yuan Longping only won the fourth place, and did not meet the standard of "the top three selected for the national team". As a result, he missed the opportunity to become an athlete.
The two episodes that are likely to lead to Yuan Longping's change of career are ultimately over, and Yuan Lao seems to have been destined to become the legendary "father of hybrid rice" for a long time.
In 1953, Yuan Longping graduated from Southwest Agricultural College with excellent results. He was assigned to Anjiang Agricultural School in Huaihua, Hunan Province, where he was responsible for teaching.
In addition to teaching, Yuan Longping's agricultural theoretical research has not been left behind. He has made a lot of research in sweet potato breeding and has gradually become a well-known agronomist.
In 1960, a major reduction in grain production occurred in New China, causing a large-scale famine. The common people did not have enough to eat, so they had to dig wild vegetables and gnaw on the bark of trees, and many died of starvation.
Yuan Longping witnessed the tragic scene of famine everywhere, and even experienced the taste of hunger, and secretly vowed in his heart that he would let the sons and daughters of China completely get rid of the suffering of hunger.
If you want to feed the stomachs of the people of the whole country, you have to greatly increase the production of staple foods. So Yuan Longping changed his research field, from studying sweet potatoes and other miscellaneous grains to studying rice, which is the most eaten by the people, trying to increase the yield of rice.
In order to achieve this goal, Yuan Longping worked hard in the fields every day. One day, he stumbled upon a high-quality rice plant in the experimental field that grew very tall and had ears twice the size of other rice.
Yuan Longping was overjoyed, and hurriedly collected this precious rice plant, used more than 100 rice grains on the rice plant as seeds, and carefully cultivated it the next year.
But the harvest of this batch of seeds in the second year was not as good as Yuan Lao expected. None of the rice plants grown from these seeds were as big as the mother plant and had as many grains, and they were no different from ordinary rice plants.
Yuan Longping was disappointed, but also began to think about the reason why the mother plant was different. After reviewing the information repeatedly, he came to a conclusion: it was a natural hybrid rice.
According to Mendel's laws of biological genetics, it is possible to retain the advantages of both male and female plants through crossing, as exemplified by Mendel's research on high-quality peas.
Inspired by this theory, Yuan Longping wanted to breed high-quality hybrid rice to increase grain production, but was almost unanimously opposed. The reason for the opposition was the denial of the prospects of the project by foreign rice experts.
Research on high-quality hybrid rice has been tried by developed countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, but the results have all failed without exception. These countries have developed science and technology, and the biological foundation is much thicker than that of New China, but they still cannot succeed, which shows the difficulty of the project.
Unlike plants such as peas, rice is self-pollinating and has very small stamens. Breeding hybrid varieties using cross-pollination is an almost impossible task.
Of course, Yuan Longping knew that it was difficult to research high-quality hybrid rice, but in order for the people of the motherland to have enough to eat, no matter how difficult it was, he had to try his best. He worked hard to convince the leadership, successfully assembled a research team, and began the exploration of hybrid rice.
If you want to get high-quality hybrid rice, the first thing to do is to find a suitable mother plant. The work was extremely difficult, because the rice bloomed in summer, and Yuan Longping and his colleagues had to brave the scorching sun and soak in the rice fields to search for it.
Yuan Longping stood under the scorching sun, held a magnifying glass, and looked at the tens of millions of rice plants in the experimental field. The scorching sun made his skin chapped and dark, and he looked like an African from afar, which earned him an interesting nickname: Congo cloth.
If it was just an unsightly appearance, the scorching sun in the south also caused great damage to Yuan Lao's health. Because of the sun and soaking in water, Yuan Longping's dermatitis was very serious, and he had to scald his skin with boiling water every day to relieve the itching.
Scientific research cannot be achieved overnight, and it takes a long time of exploration to achieve final success. Over the years, Yuan Longping and his colleagues have tried to breed hybrid rice again and again, but their enthusiasm for research has not diminished.
In order to ensure that the experimental field can achieve the best breeding conditions for hybrid rice, Yuan Longping did everything himself, and buried himself in the rice field all day long. He has been separated from his wife and children for a long time, and his life is very hard.
Some people saw Yuan Lao working so hard and felt unbearable, so they persuaded him to stay in the laboratory and go to the fields in person. Yuan Longping decisively rejected the proposal, saying that rice could not be grown in books and computers, and that it had to be implemented in the fields.
Yuan Longping and his colleagues experienced thousands of failed experiments, and finally made a breakthrough in 1970. In November of that year, Yuan Longping's team found a high-quality natural rice plant in Hainan that could be converted into improved varieties.
Yuan Longping's team, which won the treasure, took this rice plant as the mother and carried out a three-year arduous experiment, and finally developed the "three-line matching method", and then cultivated a high-quality hybrid rice: Nanyou No. 2.
In 1974, the high-quality hybrid rice developed by Yuan Longping's team was trialed on a certain scale in Hunan. That year's harvest exceeded everyone's imagination, and Nanyou No. 2 reached an astonishing figure of 600 kilograms per mu.
You must know that the average yield of rice per mu in the mainland was only 140 kilograms. Yuan Longping's research results have directly increased the unit yield of rice on the mainland several times.
After the success of Nanyou No. 2 in Hunan, it was quickly promoted to the whole country. In 1976, New China's total annual grain output set a new record, reaching 280 million tons, an increase of nearly 50 percent.
The surge in grain production on the mainland is indispensable to the high-quality hybrid rice of Nanyou No. 2. But Yuan Longping was not complacent, but continued to explore and move forward.
Over the years, Yuan Longping has been working to improve hybrid rice breeding technology. From Nanyou No. 2 to "Super Rice", the mainland's hybrid rice is becoming more and more high-quality, and the yield of paddy fields has reached new highs.
When Yuan Lao was eighty-seven years old, the unit yield of hybrid rice on the mainland had reached an astonishing 16 tons per hectare. But he was not satisfied, and wanted to increase the unit yield to 18 tons per hectare by the age of 90.
Through the efforts of Yuan Longping's team, when Yuan Lao was 89 years old, the target of 18 tons per hectare was achieved. Yuan Longping will continue to work hard to continue to sprint towards the goal of 20 tons per hectare.
In Yuan Lao's view, increasing grain output is endless, and it is best to achieve "no upper limit" in the unit yield of rice. At the same time, Yuan Longping also paid special attention to the study of "seawater rice".
The so-called "seawater rice" refers to a type of rice that can be grown in heavily saline-alkali land. Yuan Longping's team began to study "seawater rice" in 2012, and after more than ten years of hard work, it finally cultivated high-quality rice varieties with a yield of 550 kilograms per mu.
The reason why Yuan Lao attaches great importance to "seawater rice" is because the saline-alkali land area on the mainland is very large, and if the agricultural value can be fully developed, it can feed at least 100 million more people.
Whether it is "super rice" or "seawater rice", what Yuan Lao has in mind is always the issue of having enough food for the people of the motherland. He often recited his two dreams to others, and everyone was very moved after listening to them.
Yuan Lao's first dream was the dream of "enjoying the cool under Hexia". In his dream, the rice grew as long as sorghum, the ears were as big as a broom, and the grains were as full as peanuts. Yuan Lao and his colleagues enjoyed the shade in the rice field together.
And Yuan Lao's second dream, the romantic feelings and pattern are not inferior to the dream of "enjoying the cool under the grass", that is, he hopes that the hybrid rice developed by the mainland can cover all parts of the world.
Yuan Lao's research results on hybrid rice have not applied for any patents, and can be used free of charge by both the people of the motherland and international friends. Over the years, more than 40 countries in South Asia, Africa and other regions have planted "super rice" on a large scale.
According to conservative estimates by the World Rice Association, the various types of hybrid rice varieties researched by Yuan Lao feed one-fifth of the world's population. Therefore, Yuan Longping is known as the "father of hybrid rice".
Yuan Longping, who is under the prestige, does not have the slightest academic master. He is humorous, amiable, and thrifty in his style of life, which has won unanimous praise from everyone.
Among the academicians in the mainland, Yuan Longping is not only one of the most well-known academicians, but also the one with the most anecdotes. He is best known for his decades-long thrift in his private life.
Although the state gave Yuan Longping tens of millions of allowances, Yuan Lao never paid attention to material comfort. He always wears cheap clothes from "overseas shopping", gets a haircut in a street shop, and looks less like an expert and scholar, more like an ordinary old farmer.
Someone advised Yuan Lao to dress up, and he said every time that scientific researchers don't pay attention to this, and the money should be spent where it is needed. Yuan Lao used the huge allowance given by the state in the field of scientific research, and even the state-divided house was transformed into a laboratory.
However, sometimes, Yuan Lao also has a "baggage", that is, when he is recognized by passers-by in daily life. He is low-key, he doesn't like publicity, and every time he is asked by passers-by if it is Yuan Longping, he simply blurs the past with a sentence of "looks like".
In his later years, Yuan Longping did two things every day, one was to go to the supermarket to learn about the recent rice prices, and the other was to watch the weather forecast on time. The reason why Yuan Lao is so concerned about the weather is because it is closely related to agricultural production.
As a result, Yuan Lao's granddaughter didn't understand what he was doing very well because she was young, and thought that her grandfather's job was to read the weather forecast every day, so she made a joke at school.
While spreading this joke, everyone couldn't help but feel Yuan Lao's concern for agricultural production and his deep humanistic concern for the people of the motherland. Yuan Lao's concern for the weather did not stop even when he was seriously ill.
In May 2021, Yuan Lao was seriously ill and hospitalized, and he would ask the nurse every day about the weather conditions across the country that day. On May 22, Yuan Longping passed away at the age of 91.
Yuan Longping's last words were: "The output is a lot, don't forget to tell me." "Yuan Lao's outstanding contribution to the agricultural development of the motherland, as well as his great spirit of perseverance and selfless dedication, are worthy of being remembered and learned forever.