The Sunday Mail
Kudakwashe Ruzive
RENOWNED Chinese agronomist Dr Yuan Longping, who was famed for developing a concept for Zimbabwe to productively grow rice on a commercial scale has died.
He died of organ failure in his home country yesterday, leading to widespread mourning in China, Zimbabwe and other parts of the world.
In Zimbabwe, Dr Yuan’s team carried out research on upland rice in Zimbabwe with local agronomists and produced tremendous results in Selous.
China’s chief diplomat to Zimbabwe Ambassador Guo Shaochun yesterday described Dr Yuan as an astute and versatile agronomist who dedicated his life to ending hunger in China and Africa.
“Dr Yuan Longping, ‘father of hybrid rice’, is much more qualified for any world-class prizes than many of the award-winning politicians. He devoted his life to helping people get rid of hunger,” he said on Twitter.
Chief Director in the Department of Research and Specialist Services in the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Resettlement, Dr Dumisani Kutywayo, who worked with Dr Yuan in Zimbabwe said:
“We collaborated with him in evaluating six of Dr hybrid rice varieties at Selous in a work that was done in partnership with Mr Tendai Mutsvangwa. The varieties showed great potential although they required a lot of water to increase yield potential under Zimbabwean conditions.
“We compared the performance of Dr Yuan’s hybrids with local upland varieties – Nerica 1 and Nerica 7 and the results showed great potential for the hybrids under local conditions.”
Dr Yuan was respected in China, whose vast population was hit hard by food shortages in the mid-20th century.
Shortly after a serious nationwide famine in the 1960s, Dr Yuan devoted himself to researching how to boost harvests, cultivating the world’s first high-yielding hybrid rice strain in 1973.
The hybrid rice was later grown on a large scale in China and other countries, substantially raising output.
