Yuan Longping (1930–2021)

Obituary Yuan Longping (1930–2021)

Crop scientist whose high-yield hybrid rice fed billions.

hinese children recite a Tang dynasty article, expressing support for his promising poem that credits the farmer’s sweat research. The dreaded counter-revolutionary and toil for the rice on their plates. designation went to another teacher, and Yuan They should also acknowledge crop was allowed to continue working. scientist Yuan Longping, the ‘father of Scientists of Yuan’s generation were asked Chybrid rice’, the higher-yielding crop that feeds to make enormous sacrifices for their country. billions. He died on 22 May, aged 90. In his 2010 memoir, he recalled how one year As a key player in the Green Revolution, Yuan he spent just a day with his family. Particularly became one of China’s most famous scientists, in the 1970s, Yuan spent much of his time on rising to direct the China National Hybrid Hainan Island off the southern Chinese coast, Rice Research and Development Center in where he and his team hunted for the wild Changsha. When the Olympics came to China strains needed to produce hybrid seed. in 2008, he carried the torch. The scientific ethos of the Mao era empha- Asked about the secret to his success, he sized teamwork and learning from peasants. listed four factors: knowledge, hard work, Yuan mentored numerous students on the intuition and opportunity, quoting Louis importance of fieldwork. Many of these went Pasteur’s saying that “chance favours the on to make their own contributions to agricul- prepared mind”. His life reflected the fortu- tural science. Until the late 1970s, aside from itous conjunction of all four factors against his 1966 article, Yuan’s name did not appear on the backdrop of a turbulent century. the hybrid rice research he supervised. Yuan Longping was born on 7 September Yuan’s success inspired hybrid rice produc- 1930 in Beiping, as Beijing was called at the tion in India, Vietnam and the Philippines. time. On the eve of the Communist Party of When Japanese geneticist Hiroshi Ikehashi

China’s victory in 1949, he entered a college identified a gene that promotes fertility in VIA ZUMA PRESS XINHUA on the outskirts of Chongqing in Sichuan prov- fields around his school. In the West, research hybrids in the mid-1980s, Yuan was able to ince, which later became Southwest Univer- into the hybridization of wheat and maize cross diverse plant strains. As a result, rice sity, to study agriculture and crop genetics. (corn) led to the breakthroughs of the Green yields continued to rise when those of hybrid In the 1950s, China looked to the Soviet Revolution. The first generation of hybrid maize and wheat had plateaued. In 1999, it Union for guidance in science and technol- plants is typically more vigorous and produc- was estimated that the production increases ogy. Many Chinese biologists adopted the tive than either parent, a phenomenon known brought about by hybrid rice fed an addi- erroneous ideas of Soviet agronomist Trofim as heterosis. As a self-pollinating crop, how- tional 100 million Chinese people each year Lysenko. One of Yuan’s teachers at the col- ever, rice presented a unique challenge. (D. Normile Science 283, 313; 1999). lege, Guan Xianghuan, continued to follow Elected an international member of the US Gregor Mendel and US evolutionary biologist “The memory of National Academy of Science in 2006, Yuan Thomas Hunt Morgan’s theory of heredity and never made it into the Chinese Academy of genetics. Because of this, Guan was labelled hunger never Sciences despite being nominated three times. an enemy of the Communist Party in 1957 left him.” He regularly expressed disinterest in politics: and took his own life in the early years of the unusually for someone of his prominence, he Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. One of Yuan’s never joined the Communist Party. later mentors, the geneticist Bao Wenkui, who In the summer of 1961, Yuan discovered a Yuan saw agriculture as his vocation and did his PhD at the California Institute of Tech- stalk of hybrid rice in the wild. In 1964, he and continued visiting the Hainan research station nology in Pasadena, was similarly persecuted a student spent the summer scouring miles until he had a fall in March. The only conces- and imprisoned for long periods. of fields for naturally occurring male-sterile sion he made to old age was driving to the On graduating in 1953, Yuan was assigned to plants. In an article in the April 1966 issue of the fields, instead of walking or bicycling as earlier teach agronomy at Anjiang Agricultural School premier science journal, Chinese Science Bulle- in life. To the last, he expressed optimism in the in Hunan province, a place so small that he tin, Yuan reported his discovery of male-sterile endless possibilities of science and technol- struggled to find it on a map. During the Great rice plants. It might have saved his life. ogy, and that the next yield increase, with the Leap Forward (1958–60) and the resulting With the start of the Cultural Revolution potential to contribute to world food security famine, Yuan lived in the Hunan countryside. in 1966, the country descended into polit- and peace, is within reach. Nationwide, tens of millions died; some ate ical chaos. Posters denouncing Yuan as a tree bark and grass. Yuan saw the bodies of counter-revolutionary went up around campus, Shellen X. Wu is associate professor of history those who had starved to death in the road. and a spot was reserved for him in the ‘cowshed’, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her The memory of hunger never left him. or prison for intellectuals. School officials were second book will cover Chinese geopolitics From 1960, Yuan focused on rice, China’s stumped when a letter arrived from provin- and agricultural development. most important staple crop, working in the cial and national leaders who had seen Yuan’s e-mail: [email protected]