Over the past five decades, hybrid rice developed by China has been promoted in a cumulative cultivated area of 600 million hectares across the country, helping to achieve a total rice yield of 800 billion kilograms.
Rice is one of the most important staple foods for the Chinese. Chinese scientist Yuan Longping, widely known as the “father of hybrid rice,” and his research team successfully cultivated the world’s first high-yielding hybrid rice strain in 1973.
The latest hybrid rice cultivation data was released during an international seminar held in central China’s Hunan Province in memory of the 50th anniversary of the successful research of Yuan hybrid rice strains.
China has recorded that its average yield per mu (about 0.067 hectare) of rice per season has risen from 170 kilograms during the 1950s and 1960s to 470 kilograms today, said Bai Lianyang, an official at the Hunan Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
Nowadays, more than 17 million hectares of hybrid rice are planted in China every year, helping to boost rice production by about 2.5 million tons and feed more than 80 million people annually, Bai added.
Source: http://www.chinahoje.net/area-cultivada-de-arroz-hibrido-da-china-acumula-600-milhoes-de-hectares/
