China has made a breakthrough in super hybrid rice development, giving a promising future to large-scale cultivation, said a noted Chinese rice expert Thursday in Xiangtan County of Hunan Province.

Yuan Longping, known as "the father of hybrid rice," announced the major progress while investigating a hybrid rice demonstration zone in Xiangtan County.

An average of 12,112 kg of rice per hectare is yielded in the 6.8-hectare experimental field, according to an investigation team of experts.

Another demonstration zone in Longshan County of the central China province passed experts' appraisal last month, with an average yield of 12,261 kg per hectare.

The encouraging results will lay a basis for large-scale cultivation of the super hybrid rice, which could lead to an average output of 9,750 kg per hectare, compared with the current national average of 6,300 kg, said Yuan.

"And the production cost will not rise much for peasants who grow the super hybrid rice," Yuan added.

The "super hybrid rice cultivation program," chaired by Yuan, was launched in 1997, targeting at an average of more than with an aim of 10,500 kg per hectare by 2000 and above 12,000 kg by 2005.

Yuan is famous for his outstanding achievements in breeding high-yield hybrid rice, which has substantially increased China's grain output. He was the first in the world to create hybrid rice in the 1960s. Since then, 50 percent of China's total rice cultivation fields have been sowed to hybrid rice, which added some 300 billion kg to the country's grain output in 1999.

(Xinhua News Agency October 10, 2003)