Bid to lift hybrid rice yield to 15 tonnes a hectare slammed
Rival researchers say Professor Yuan's bid to reach 15 tonnes a hectare is too costly and risks making rice vulnerable to pests and weather
A farming pioneer's ambitious goal to increase the yield of hybrid rice by 11 per cent in the next three years risks making the staple more vulnerable to weather, disease and pests, agriculture experts have warned.
Professor Yuan Longping, whose work in the 1970s made him China's "father of hybrid rice", told a seminar in Jiangsu on Monday that he would attempt to push the yield of one hectare of his "super-hybrid" rice to 15 tonnes by 2015, up from his current record of 13.5 tonnes, according to Xinhua.
Yuan hopes to have a mass plantation of such rice operational by 2020 in an effort to meet the country's soaring food demands. He said the new rice could feed tens of millions more people annually. "A hectare of rice can feed 27 people today, [it] must feed 43 people by 2050," Xinhua quoted Yuan as saying.
But the goal has struck many experts as overly aggressive.
China's rice fields, including both hybrid and normal rice, already yield 6.7 tonnes a hectare annually. That was not far behind the 7.5-tonne yields in developed countries where the most advanced farming technologies are used, such as Australia and the United States.
Several scientists, however, said the 15-tonne target was impractical because the costs of growing such rice, in terms of fertiliser and land management, would be enormous. Moreover, they warned that focus on field yield could sacrifice the crop's resistance to weather and pests.