Yuan Longping.jpg (Photo : www.scmp.com)
Yuan Longping, the father of Chinese hybrid rice and green revolution, shared his opinion on genetically modified crops in a recent interview.
He said that genetically modified crops would be the future development direction of crop production. Yuan Longping also revealed that he had been conducting research on transferring genetically modified maize genome into rice.
"Whether genetically modified crops are good or not should not be simply generalized," said Yuan Longping with his strong Hunan accent. Yuan Longping thought genetically modified crops would be the future direction of development for crop production.
According to Yuan Longping, insecticide resistance genes, also known as Bacillus thuringiensis genes, have given rise to the public concern about the safety of genetically modified crops. Yuan revealed that he had been conducting research on how to transfer the C4 carbon fixation of maize into rice so that the photosynthetic efficiency of rice could be improved by 30% to 50%, thus increasing production.
"We usually eat corns. Why not try such genetically modified crops with maize genome?" questioned Yuan Longping. "Three quarters of the soybeans we eat come from the US. They are also genetically modified crops," said Yuan.
When talking about his dream, Yuan Longping expressed his hope that his hybrid rice could be promoted to foreign countries and that some day half of the rice planted all over the world would be his hybrid rice. In addition, Yuan Longping looked forward to seeing if the government could help several leading enterprises.
Yuan Longping is a Chinese agricultural scientist and educator, who is best known for his development of the first hybrid rice varieties in the 1970s. It was in 1979 when Yuan Longping's technique for hybrid rice was introduced into the US. Yuan is sometimes called "The Father of Hybrid Rice" by the Chinese media.
