5. For most Chinese people, rice is an important part of almost every meal. But for Yuan Longping, rice was more than that. It was his life-long career (事业). Yuan, known as China's "father of hybrid rice (杂交水稻)", created hybrid rice that helps feed the world. On May 22, Yuan died at 91. People in China and around the world felt sad.
In the 1960s, people in China didn't have enough food to eat. Many people even died because of this. Yuan was sad to see this. He decided to work on a kind of hybrid rice. He thought this rice could feed more people.
At the time, other scientists didn't think hybrid rice was possible. But Yuan wanted to try anyway. He spent four years looking for wild rice that could be crossed (杂交) with other plants. In 1964, he found it!
In 1973, he grew the world's first hybrid rice strain (品种). It could reach a
yield of over 500 kg per mu (亩), higher than the 300-kg yields of other kinds of rice. Farmers can grow it on many different kinds of land. It can fight bad weather and disease, too.
This kind of hybrid rice has been grown all over China since then. It has helped China feed nearly one-fifth of the world's population with only about 7 percent of the world's farmland, CGTN reported.
Yuan was a famous scientist. But he called himself a farmer. He spent most of his time in the field. Even in March this year, he was working in a field in Hainan. Yuan once said he had two dreams. One was to enjoy the shade under rice crops that were taller than men. The other was that hybrid rice would be grown all over the world. One day his dreams might come true.