Yuan Longping’s dream of enjoying the cold under the grass is such a dream

　　Tech Observer

　　In the past two days, one of the two major dreams pursued by Yuan Longping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, has been screened again.

According to media reports, 15 acres of "giant rice", which is twice the height of conventional rice, was successfully tested in Chongqing.

Netizens are very pleased and have expressed that Academician Yuan Longping's "dream of enjoying the coolness under Hexia" is about to come true.

　　So, what exactly does Yuan Lao’s "dream of enjoying the cold under Hexia" look like?

　　Yuan Longping once said in an interview, “I had a dream. I dreamed that my rice was taller than sorghum, the ears were longer than a broom, and the grains were as big as peanuts. My assistant and I were sitting there. Enjoy the cool under the ears..."

　　Yuan Longping has been engaged in hybrid rice research all his life, pursuing super-high yield of rice all his life.

Therefore, the essence of "Hexia Chill Dream" is super high-yield, and Chill is just a "by-product."

　　Taking super hybrid rice as an example, the highest record of yield per mu of 100-mu contiguous single-season rice is 1152.3 kg (2304.6 kg).

Among the existing super rice varieties, the highest number of grains per panicle is more than 800, and the super rice varieties that are widely promoted in production are by no means "orphans."

　　There is also a well-known basic law in the rice breeding community: the lodging resistance of rice is inversely proportional to the square of the height of the rice plant.

In other words, as the height of the rice stalk increases, its lodging resistance decreases rapidly.

Therefore, whether high-stalk rice can resist lodging with high yield is a huge challenge.

　　In the true sense, the judgment of rice lodging resistance must be when the rice is mature and is about to be harvested.

For example, when rice is heading, intuitively, it is also full of grains, but the rice that looks very beautiful is actually not "good" in the stomach, so there is no "power" to "overwhelm" the rice stalks. ".

Only when the rice is ripe and golden, the husk is full of starch, and the rice is genuine and heavy, the rice varieties can withstand the attack of wind and rain without falling, which is the true "lodging resistance".

Of course, for giant rice with low yields, there may not be a "lodging resistance" problem. After all, low yields mean that the ears are not heavy and the stalks are not crushed.

　　The high-stalk variety that can realize the "dream of enjoying the coolness under the grass" by Academician Yuan Longping was named the "new type of high-stalk variety" by him.

Such varieties are not only high stalks, but also high yield and lodging resistance.

Looking at it this way, the technical difficulty is not trivial.

Therefore, "Hexia Dream" is a lifelong effort of the old man, but as of now, the great dream that has not yet been realized in science.

　　Maybe everyone will have questions, why does the old man still have such a dream with such a high degree of difficulty?

　　In fact, because the lodging resistance of rice is inversely proportional to the square of the plant height, in order to solve the problem that rice varieties with high stalks are not lodging resistant in the past, a “dwarf academician” in the rice industry, Huang Yaoxiang, has developed a lodging resistant Dwarf rice varieties.

　　After rice is dwarfed, the lodging resistance and harvest index (that is, the ratio of the so-called economic yield of grain yield to the total biological yield of all organisms) are greatly improved.

After decades of cultivation and technological development of dwarf varieties, there are now new semi-high-stalked rice varieties (with a stalk height of 1.2 to 1.5 meters). Their yield increasing potential will be more promising in the next few decades. Expect.

　　However, even though the economic output of semi-dwarf and semi-high stalk varieties still has potential to be tapped, the total biological output will always encounter a "ceiling."

Therefore, the easiest way to increase the total biological yield is to increase the plant height.

However, high stalks will bring about a series of technical problems that need to be solved urgently, such as a sharp decline in lodging resistance, a decrease in harvest index, and a substantial decrease in economic efficiency.

Only when these problems are solved one by one can we get the high-stalk and high-yielding "Gao Fu Shuai" variety in Yuan Longping's "Hexia Shao Liang Meng".

　　Obviously, the "new high-stalk varieties" are not the same thing as the original high-stalk varieties.

However, it is understood that this kind of high-stalk and high-yield rice material and technology can be innovated, but it has not yet been discovered by the scientific research community.

This may go through a relatively long research process.

　　It is gratifying that, according to earlier reports, the "giant rice" research has been carried out for at least 3 to 4 years.

This research is still being carried out in many places in our country to this day.

　　Although it is not the "He" in "Hexia Chilling Dream" for the time being, the great dream will finally come true only with the continuous efforts of scientific researchers.

　　When that day really comes, the old man will smile knowingly in heaven.