This Day, That Year: June 6

Editor's note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China.

On June 6, 1981, Yuan Longping won the first national special invention prize for developing varieties of hybrid rice. He has spent his life working to feed a world hungry for the commodity, as seen in the item on Nov 3, 1982, from China Daily.

In 1973, Yuan successfully developed a special type of long-grained hybrid rice, and the following year he commercially released a hybrid rice variety with 20 percent higher yields, putting China in the global lead in rice production. For the achievement, he was dubbed the "Father of Hybrid Rice".

In 1979, the technique for hybrid rice was introduced into the United States, the first case of intellectual property rights transfer in the history of New China.

The crop is now grown in more than 30 countries and regions, with the total area surpassing 7 million hectares.

By 2003, half of China's rice production area was planted with hybrid rice. Yuan set world records in hybrid rice yield - in 1999, 2005, 2011 and 2017.

Covering 16 million hectares, or about 53 percent of China's rice acreage, and rice output having grown from 6 metric tons per hectare in the 1970s to 15 metric tons now, hybrid rice is known as the "fifth invention in the world". The new variety has made solid contributions to helping feed the Chinese people - which account for 21 percent of the global population - with only 7 percent of the world's arable land.

The 89-year-old scientist continues his research. At Qingdao's Saline-Alkali Tolerant Rice Research and Development Center in Shandong province, which is led by Yuan, a successful experiment has been carried out in planting rice in the Dubai desert.

This is the first time that rice has been grown in a desert. It is a major contribution to enhancing food self-sufficiency, global food security and improving the environment of desert regions.