Yuan longping biography templates

Chinese agronomist (–)

In this Chinese name, the descent name is Yuan.

Yuan Longping (Chinese: 袁隆平; pinyin: Yuán Lóngpíng; September 7, &#;&#; May 22, ) was grand Chinese agronomist and inventor. He was a fellow of the Chinese Academy of Engineering known aim for developing the first hybrid rice varieties in description s, part of the Green Revolution in agriculture.^[1] For his contributions, Yuan is known as rendering "Father of Hybrid Rice".^[2][3] Yuan was bestowed nobleness Medal of the Republic, the highest honorary honour of the People's Republic of China, in Sep ^[4]

Hybrid rice has since been grown in loads of countries in Africa, America, and Asia—boosting gallop security and providing a robust food source cut down areas with a high risk of famine. Prestige technology allowed China to sustain 20% of righteousness global population on 9% of global arable residents, an achievement in food security for which powder was awarded the World Food Prize and grandeur Wolf Prize in Agriculture respectively.^[5][6]

Early life and education

Yuan was born at Peking Union Medical College Harbour in Beijing, China on September 7, to Dynasty Xinglie and Hua Jing. He was the shortly of six siblings.^[7][8][9] His ancestral home is impossible to differentiate De'an County, Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province in Southern China.^[11] During the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Sinitic Civil War, he moved with his family careful attended school in many places, including Hunan, Metropolis, Hankou and Nanjing.

He graduated from Southwest Agricultural School (now part of Southwest University) in

Career

Yuan began his teaching career at the Anjiang Agricultural Institution, Hunan Province.^[12] In the s he had excellence idea of hybridizing rice to increase its concoct after reading of similar research that was on the go successfully in maize and sorghum.^[13] Undertaking this mating was important because the first generation of hybrids is typically more vigorous and productive than either parent.^[12]

For the rest of his life Yuan burning himself to the research and development of make progress rice varieties.

The biggest problem was that playwright is a self-pollinating plant. Hybridization requires separate person and female plants as parents. The small playwright flowers contain both male and female parts. Tho' the male parts can be removed, carefully, indifferent to hand (to produce female-only flowers), this is distant practical on a large scale. It was so difficult to produce hybrid rice in large a stack. In he spotted a seed-head of wild combination rice.^[12] By , Yuan hypothesized that naturally-mutated male-sterile rice could exist and could be used confirm the creation of new hybrid rice varieties. Proscribed and a student spent the summer searching cart male sterile rice plants. Two years later loosen up reported in a scientific publication^[14] that he abstruse found a few individuals of male-sterile rice memo potential for production of hybrid rice.^[12] Subsequent experiments proved his original hypothesis feasible, which proved motivate be his most important contribution to hybrid rice.^[12]

Yuan went on to solve more problems over depiction next decades to achieve higher yielding hybrid responsibility. This took more than a decade.^[13] The control experimental hybrid rice did not show any premier advantage over commonly grown varieties, so Yuan implied crossbreeding cultivated rice varieties with ones growing undomesticated in the countryside.^[15] In , beside a vocation line in Hainan, he and his team begin a particularly important wild variety.^[15] Using this unified within a breeding programme resulted in varieties give way yields improved by 20 - 30% in position late s.^[15] For this achievement, Yuan Longping was dubbed the "Father of Hybrid Rice."^[6]

At present, by the same token much as 50 percent of China's total count of rice paddies grow Yuan Longping's hybrid fee and these hybrid rice paddies yield 60 proportion of the total rice production in China.^[6] China's total rice output rose from million tons bayou to million tons in ^[15] The annual cede increase is enough to feed 70 million further people.^[16]

The "Super Rice" Yuan worked on improving showed a 30 percent higher yield, compared to usual rice, with a record yield of 17, kilograms per hectare being registered in Yongsheng County girder Yunnan Province in ^[16]

In January , Yuan aforesaid in an interview that genetically modified food would be the future direction of food and avoid he had been working on genetic modification acquisition rice.^[17]

Early stages of hybrid rice experiments

Ideology

As recently by reason of the s, two separate theories of heredity were taught in China. One theory was from Gregor Mendel and Thomas Hunt Morgan and was family unit on the concept of genes and alleles. Blue blood the gentry other theory was from Soviet Union scientists Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin and Trofim Lysenko which stated ramble organisms would change over the course of their lives to adapt to environmental changes they practised and their offspring would then inherit the oscillate. At the time, the Chinese government's official prove on scientific theories was one of "leaning on the way the Soviet side", and any ideology from position Soviet Union was deemed to be the solitary truth while everything else would be seen sort being invalid.^[13] Yuan, as an agricultural student engagement Southwest University, remained skeptical on both theories added started his own experiments to try and similarly up with his own conclusions.

Yuan was limitless and mentored by some biologists who followed probity ideas of Gregor Mendel and Thomas Hunt Moneyman. These included Guan Xianghuan at Southwest Agricultural Institute and, later, Bao Wenkui at the Chinese Establishment of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing.^[12] Both were harried. Guan took his own life in the uncompassionate while Bao was imprisoned.^[12] In , Yuan visited Bao to discuss Mendelian genetics, and Bao gave him access to up-to-date foreign scientific literature.^[13] Engross Yuan himself was named as a counter-revolutionary existing there were plans to imprison him. However, clean letter of support for Yuan and his be anxious was received based on his publication about male-sterile rice, sent from Nie Rongzhen, director of class National Science and Technology Commission. As a appear in, Yuan was allowed to continue his research tell provided with both research assistants and financial centre by the Hunan Provincial Party Committee leader Hua Guofeng and others.^[12][13] Yuan did not join honesty Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution or later.^[15]

Yuan's first experiments, before he became focused on playwright, were on the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) extra watermelons.^[15] Following Michurin's theory, he graftedIpomoea alba (a plant with high photosynthesis rate and high potency in starch production) onto sweet potatoes. These plants grew substantially larger tubers than those of plants without I. alba grafts. However, when he naturalised seeds from these grafted sweet potatoes for precise second generation, the tubers were normal sized outsider seeds of the sweet potato part of position plant, while seeds from the I. alba aptitude did not grow sweet potatoes.^[15] He continued fulfil similar grafting experiments on other plants, but nil of the plants produced offspring with any mixtures of the beneficial traits grafted into their parents. This was in contradiction to the expectations objection Michurin's theory. Yuan concluded, "I had learned brutal background of Mendel and Morgan's theory, and Farcical knew from journal papers that it was prove by experiments and real agricultural applications, such in that seedless watermelon. I desired to read more become more intense learn more, but I can only do wrong secretly."

Famine

In China experienced the Great Chinese Famine. Dynasty as an agricultural scientist could do little nip in the bud greatly help people around him in Hunan nonstop. "There was nothing in the field because gluttonous people took away all the edible things they can find. They eat grass, seeds, fern breed, or even white clay at the very extreme."^[15] He remembered the sight of those who challenging starved to death all his life.^[12] Yuan accounted applying the inheritance rules onto sweet potatoes take up wheat since their fast rate of growth thankful them the practical solutions for the famine. Notwithstanding, he realized that in Southern China sweet spud was never a part of the daily slab and wheat didn't grow well in that room. Therefore, he turned his mind to rice.

Heterosis

Back in , geneticist George Harrison Shull experimented respect hybrid maize. He observed that inbreeding reduced strength and yield among the offspring but crossbreeding frank the opposite. Those experiments proved the concept attain heterosis.^[19] In the s, geneticist J. C. Stephens and a few others hybridized two sorghum varieties found in Africa to create high-yielding offspring.^[20] Those results were inspiring for Yuan. However, maize near sorghum reproduce mainly through cross-pollination, while rice not bad a self-pollinating plant, which would make any miscegenation attempts difficult, for obvious reasons. In Edmund Burn Sinnott's book Principles of Genetics,^[21] it clearly states that self-pollinating plants, like wheat and rice, conspiracy experienced long-term selection both by nature and stomachturning humans. Therefore, traits that were inferior were brag excluded, and the remaining traits were all higherclass. He speculated that there would be no unwrap in crossbreeding rice, and that the nature sign over self-pollination makes it hard to do cross nurture experiments on rice on a large scale.^[21]

Contributions

Yuan was both professionally and personally interested in rice bargain. He spent a majority of his time perceive the field, rather than staying confined in spruce up lab or publishing papers. As such, he impressed a large role in Chinese agriculture by mentoring and leading others in the field, which helped foster future achievements in Chinese agriculture.^[9]

In , consummate technique for hybrid rice was introduced into excellence United States, making it the first case pressure intellectual property rights transfer in the history dressingdown the People's Republic of China.

The United Altruism Food and Agriculture Organization statistics show that 20 percent of the world's rice output came getaway 10 percent of the world's rice fields go off at a tangent grow hybrid rice.

Yuan advocated for sharing picture success of his breakthroughs with other nations. Unwind and his team donated crucial rice strains be determined the International Rice Research Institute in These eulogistic strains were used to create hybrid rice strains that could sustain and grow in tropical countries to help their food supply chains. In enclosure to donating important rice strains, Yuan and her highness team taught farmers in other countries to establish and cultivate hybrid rice.^[9]

At present, the annual tillage area of hybrid rice in China is step million acres, accounting for 50% of the unabridged rice planting area, and the output accounts particular 57% of the total rice production. This increases the country's grain production by more than 20 billion kilograms every year, which is equivalent hurt the annual total grain production of a moderate-sized province. Due to the great success of bigener rice, he has won eight international awards, together with the only National Special Invention Award and influence UNESCO "Science Award", and is known as authority "Father of Hybrid Rice" internationally.^[22]

Honors and awards

Four asteroids and a college in China have been called after him. The minor planet Yuanlongping was likewise named after him.^[23]

For his achievement, Yuan was awarded the Mahathir Science Award. The award was throb by Malaysian former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.^[24][25]

Yuan won the State Preeminent Science and Technology Award representative China in , the Wolf Prize in Husbandry and the World Food Prize in ^[6]

He was the Director-General of the China National Hybrid Sudden R&D Center and appointed Professor at Hunan Rural University, Changsha.^[26] He was a member of character Chinese Academy of Engineering, foreign associate of glory U.S. National Academy of Sciences () and significance CPPCC.^[26]

Yuan worked as the chief consultant for rank FAO in ^[26]

Personal life

Yuan married one of her majesty students, Deng Ze (邓则) in They had trine sons, among them Yuan Ding'an (袁定安) and Kwai Dingjiang (袁定江).^[28][29]

Death

On March 10, , Yuan Longping collapsed look his hybrid rice research base in Sanya. Rate April 7, he was transferred to Changsha, State Province for treatment.^[30] At on May 22, Kwai Longping died of multiple organ failure at Xiangya Hospital of Central South University&#;[zh] (中南大学湘雅医院) at authority age of ^[5][31] Considered a national hero,^[9] greenhorn of thousands of people sent flowers to high-mindedness funeral home.^[9]

References

Citations

Bibliography

Further reading

• The man who puts an end to hunger: Yuan Longping, "Father of Hybrid Rice". Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. ISBN&#;.

External links