Yuan Longping, China's "Father of Hybrid Rice", predicts his latest super-strain of the ubiquitous grain will be widely planted in 2006.

Yuan said that with an experimental yielding capacity of 12 tons per hectare, the second-phase super-strain is expected to be promoted on a large scale in 2006.

Yuan said that if the strain is sown over 6.67 million hectares, with a conservative production of 9.75 tons per hectare, China will harvest 15 billion more kilograms of rice, enough to feed 30 million more people.

Yuan Longping was awarded the World Food Prize in October for his outstanding work on hybrid rice.

(CRI November 9, 2004)