Super Hybrid Rice: Crossing the "Forbidden Zone" of Breeding and Filling the Chinese Bowl with Chinese Grain
Medium rice yields 900 kg, 1,000 kg, 1100 kg per mu, and double-season rice yields 1500 kg per mu... With the unremitting efforts of scientific researchers headed by Yuan Longping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, my country’s super hybrid rice yield per mu has been constantly following its own achievements. "It has refreshed the world record set by itself time and time again, ensuring the country's food security and the "sense of security" that the people can eat.
2000, 2004, 2011, 2014.
700 kg, 800 kg, 900 kg, 1000 kg.
Two sets of corresponding numbers, one goal.
In 1996, my country launched the "China Super Rice Breeding Project".
Initially, it was planned to be divided into two phases. By 2000 and 2005, rice varieties with yields of up to 700 kg and 800 kg per mu were bred.
But the "plan" failed to keep up with the "change."
The "story" of super hybrid rice has just begun, but it has no end.
Medium rice yields 900 kg, 1,000 kg, 1100 kg per mu, and double-season rice yields 1500 kg per mu... With the unremitting efforts of scientific researchers headed by Yuan Longping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, my country’s super hybrid rice yield per mu has been constantly following its own achievements. "It has refreshed the world record set by itself time and time again, ensuring the country's food security and the "sense of security" that the people can eat.
In today's China, the truly unforgettable "hungry" feeling has become an "experience" that is no longer possible.
In the peaceful life of the years, do people know how Chinese scientists have struggled in the history of human anti-hunger?
This paper is still shining after more than half a century
"A small rice plant has solved the food problem of the people in China and the world. It was a landmark paper published by Mr. Yuan Longping in 1966 that opened the prelude to the use of heterosis in rice breeding in my country." Peng Binzeng, editor of "Science Bulletin" So evaluated.
On February 28, 1966, Yuan Longping's paper entitled "Male Sterility in Rice" was published in the Chinese version of "Science Bulletin", Volume 17, Issue 4.
On April 15, the English version excerpted and translated by the editorial office of the "Science Bulletin" was published in its foreign language edition, Volume 17, Issue 7.
No one ever thought that such a paper that challenged the classical theory and "shocked the world" has been confirmed by scientific research and application to this day.
This is a "prediction" of crossing the "forbidden zone" of rice breeding.
With it, the rapid development of my country's hybrid rice breeding and industry has made a great contribution to my country and the world's food security.
"Rice has heterosis", "It is necessary to use the heterosis of rice, and the male sterility of rice is the first to be used." The first-generation advantage of rice becomes possible, and it will bring substantial increase in rice production", the article "Male Sterility of Rice" is so clear.
Behind the conclusion is the "first experience" of Yuan Longping and several rice scientific researchers.
"For systematic breeding, we must choose large ears. Every year from the heading to maturity of rice, I go to the fields to select seeds." Yuan Longping once recalled.
One day in July 1961, he found a rice plant with full grains, more than 10 8-inch long ears, and growing like a "waterfall".
Because of its "extraordinary flock", Yuan Longping thought he had found a "good breed".
Carefully marking and nurturing, he is looking forward to his "baby bumps", and he will offer a huge increase in income from the mu-yield experiment in the coming year.
How did he know that the "good seeds" he was looking forward to in the second year were uneven.
Depressed Yuan Longping sat alone on the ridge, staring at the rice plants in a daze.
In the meantime, inspiration suddenly came: self-pollinated rice has the phenomenon of "separation" that can only be found in the offspring of hybrids. Does it mean that self-pollinated crops may also have heterosis?
Thinking of this, he hurriedly recorded and repeatedly counted the uneven separation ratio of rice ears.
3:1!
Fully conforms to Mendelian separation law!
Yuan Longping is very excited: the "outstanding chickens" plants he selected are indeed natural hybrid rice!
Rice does have heterosis!
Heterosis is a universal phenomenon in biology.
However, according to the classical theories of genetics and the prevailing international opinions at that time, rice, as a self-pollinated crop with small floral organs, has no heterosis.
But even if his conclusions were contrary to the authority of the time, he still insisted on his ideas.
Together with other scientific researchers, he was "searched for thousands of Baidu" among thousands or tens of thousands of rice ears every day in the wind and sun.
According to records, in 1964 and 1965, they inspected hundreds of thousands of rice ears, repeatedly tested and accumulated them, and finally published the shining paper "Male Sterility in Rice" in the history of hybrid rice in the world. Sex.
"This paper is a pioneering work in the field of hybrid rice research, pointing out the strategic direction of hybrid rice breeding development, and has eternal guidance for the subsequent collaborative research on hybrid rice breeding and development across the country." Director of China National Rice Research Institute Cheng Hua said.
In 1971, Chinese scientists bred male sterile lines.
In 1973, Chinese scientists found a three-line matching model and established the "National Hybrid Rice Research Cooperation Group."
In 1976, my country successfully realized large-scale seed production with three-line matching.
It was only 6 years before and after, which is surprising China's speed.
On June 6, 1981, because of this outstanding contribution, New China's first special invention award was awarded to the National Indica Hybrid Rice Scientific Research Collaboration Group.
In fact, inspired by the paper, research on hybrid rice has gradually emerged abroad.
In 1977, the International Rice Research Institute launched a hybrid rice research project; in the early 1990s, the project expanded to countries in South Asia and Southeast Asia; in 1991, the International Rice Research Institute bred and released the first foreign commercial hybrid rice variety in the Philippines...
Their scientific research has also suffered a "disaster of extinction"
"Don't look at the attention of China's super hybrid rice technology today, but the process of tackling the key is the same as other scientific research, and it will inevitably be beaten and go the wrong way." Xie Changjiang, the former party secretary of the Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Center, once told the Science and Technology Daily reporter. Make complaints.
China's hybrid rice technology is a strong mark in the history of the world's scientific and technological development.
It is also a "national treasure" for ensuring national food security and a "heavy tool" for solving the food problem of one billion people.
However, the road to tackling key problems in hybrid rice technology is not "smooth and smooth."
For example, the two-line research after the three-line breeding almost ended the research on the two-line hybrid rice technology.
The so-called two-line hybrid rice breeding technology is a breeding technology based on a light-temperature-sensitive male sterile line.
Compared with the previous three-line hybrid rice breeding technology, the light-temperature-sensitive sterile line as the "mother" acts as a sterile line and a maintainer line at the same time.
In other words, hybrid rice breeding has developed from "one wife and two husbands" to "one wife and one husband".
What is the scientific status of the two-system method?
In 2014, in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, super hybrid rice was once again awarded the "2013 National Science and Technology Progress Special Award".
The reason for the award is my country’s original "two-line hybrid rice technology".
This is also one of the commonly used techniques for super hybrid rice breeding in my country until now.
It was this achievement that had such a status, but it suffered a serious setback during the midsummer low temperature in 1989, and it was almost completely rejected.
At the beginning of the study, researchers did not fully understand the "mother"'s fertility conversion habits.
Until 1989, a rare low temperature appeared in the midsummer of our country.
In this low temperature, the "mother" behaved extremely "uneasy" and abnormally "switched" between the roles of the sterile line and the maintainer line, which eventually led to a large-scale failure of the two-line legal seed production nationwide that year.
For a time, the scientific research community generally "badged" two-line breeding, and the research was even abandoned by the state and scientific researchers.
Yuan Longping and the researchers gritted their teeth under tremendous pressure, looking for the reasons, adjusting the technical strategies for breeding sterile lines, and finally discovered the "critical temperature point" that led to male sterility, and solved the critical temperature "drift" during the reproduction process of sterile lines. And other issues.
Only afterwards, this major breakthrough in breeding technology in the history of world crop breeding has also allowed my country to continue to lead the world in the level of hybrid rice research.
The global dream of China's hybrid rice "shocks every step"
In 1979, Yuan Longping was invited to the Philippines to attend an international academic conference and give a conference report. This was the first time that my country disclosed the results of hybrid rice research to the international community.
Since then, Chinese hybrid rice began to go to the world.
Few people know how "shocking every step" is behind the internationalization of Chinese hybrid rice.
In this regard, Yuan Longping once recalled: “In the rice laboratory of the Central Agricultural Research Institute of Myanmar, my students and I worked in the fields. Because the Burmese believe in Buddha and do not kill, there are cobras everywhere in the rice fields. Once, from the drawer. Eight little cobras sprang out from the Lilian, and I still have a lingering fear. In the tropical rain forest, we have to fight against the blood-sucking dryland leeches..."
It is under such circumstances that a few years ago, during the golden rice growing season in Nigeria, a group of rice farmers from Changsha flew to the local area to implement large-scale planting of 10,000 mu of hybrid rice.
At first, choosing a local "gemous land" that can grow hundreds of acres of rice fields can keep the experts busy for more than a week.
Now here, more than 20,000 hectares of hybrid rice can be planted, which has double the yield of local varieties...
Today, from large farms in the United States to the tropical rain forests of Myanmar and the Philippines; from the Indian plateau to the African savannah...there is the fragrance of Chinese hybrid rice.
Hybrid rice has been successfully demonstrated in more than 40 countries in Asia, Africa, and along the “Belt and Road”, and has been widely promoted in more than 10 countries.
Nowadays, at the harvest time of each year, rice breeders can "please watch the waves of rice stalks", and Yuan Longping's dream of "being cool under the grass" has become their dream pursuit.