Yuan longping biography of rory

Yuan Longping (1st R), a globally renowned Chinese agricultural scientist known as the "father of hybrid rice," attends the opening ceremony for newly enrolled undergraduates at Hunan Agricultural University in Changsha, central China's Hunan Province, Sept.

16, 2019. (Xinhua/Chen Sihan)

Yuan Longping, a globally renowned agronomist known for developing the first hybrid rice strains, just celebrated his 90th birthday in accordance with the traditional Chinese age counting system.

Yuan, born in September 1930, has helped China work a great wonder -- feeding nearly one-fifth of the world's population with less than 9 percent of the world's total arable land.

Getting enough to eat, however, used to be a serious problem in China. "I saw heartbreaking scenes of people starving to death on the road before 1949," recalled Yuan.

It was that year when Yuan applied for Southwest Agricultural College and began his special connection with rice -- a staple food of the Chinese people that