HYBRID RICE

In 1964 a Chinese rice breeder, Yuan Longping, discovered a rice plant that was the genetic key to the successful development of high yielding hybrid rice. At that time, China was a secretive communist state where self pollinating varietal rice was grown on collective farms using highly labor intensive practices... Forty years later, by 2004, hybrid rice, based on Yuan's work, was being grown commercially in the United States using mechanized farming practices. This book describes the journey across those four decades and the chain of events and people which resulted in technical success in China by 1976 and in the United States by 2000.