Pioneer 14 of 21 · 1930-2021

Yuan Longping

Contribution. He led the work that produced the first commercial hybrid rice, which yields about 20% more than improved conventional varieties. By 2019 hybrid rice covered 13.33 million hectares in China, about half of its rice area and 58% of its rice output. Outside China, hybrid rice covered about 8 million hectares in 2019, up from about 6.3 million hectares in 2014 (IRRI).

Factor coverage

Favorable entries (helped or barrier absent) and adverse entries (barrier or not overcome) by factor. Factor tags are this site's classification.

Biological01 Psychological10 Economic01 Societal33 Cultural02 Social21 Environmental00 Educational02 Technological00

Barriers faced

Factors	Statement
Societal Biological	He witnessed mass starvation in rural Hunan during the famine that followed the Great Leap Forward.
Educational Economic	From 1953 to 1971 he taught at a rural agricultural school in Anjiang, Hunan, rather than working at a research institute.
Educational Cultural	His training followed the Soviet theories of heredity of Michurin and Lysenko, and he had to teach himself Mendelian genetics.
Cultural	The accepted view was that rice, which pollinates itself, would not show hybrid vigor.
Societal	He was denounced as a counter-revolutionary in 1966, during the Cultural Revolution.

What helped

Factors	Statement
Psychological	Persistence in the field. In 1964 he and a student searched about 14,000 rice ears and found six male-sterile plants. He published the finding in 1966.
Societal Social	Protection from the state. An official in Beijing who had read his paper ordered that he be protected and funded. In his oral autobiography, Yuan says that Xiong Yanheng of the State Science and Technology Commission found his paper and passed it to bureau director Zhao Shiying. With the approval of the Commission's leader Nie Rongzhen, Zhao wrote in May 1966 ordering local officials to support the research. In 1975 the central government committed funds to spread hybrid rice.
Social Societal	A national team. In November 1970 his assistant Li Bihu and Feng Keshan, a technician at a farm on Hainan Island, found a wild male-sterile rice plant there, which became the key breeding material. From 1971 the material was shared with more than 20 research units in 13 provinces, and in 1972 hybrid rice became a national priority project.
Societal	Rollout. The first hybrid variety came in 1973, and commercial planting began in 1976.

Not overcome

Factors	Statement
Societal Social	He was nominated three times for the Chinese Academy of Sciences but was never elected, although he was elected to the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 1995.

Notes

Factors	Statement
Social	Hybrid rice was a team achievement. Li Bihu and the farm technician Feng Keshan found the wild plant while Yuan was in Beijing, and in 1973 Zhang Xiancheng's team found the restorer lines that completed the breeding system. The historian Sigrid Schmalzer notes that hybrid rice was developed through a network of peasants, technicians, and scientists, and that Mao-era accounts presented it as "mass science."

Factors

Statement

Hybrid rice was a team achievement. Li Bihu and the farm technician Feng Keshan found the wild plant while Yuan was in Beijing, and in 1973 Zhang Xiancheng's team found the restorer lines that completed the breeding system. The historian Sigrid Schmalzer notes that hybrid rice was developed through a network of peasants, technicians, and scientists, and that Mao-era accounts presented it as "mass science."

Pattern summary

Element	In this case
Door-opener	An official in Beijing who protected his work
Knowledge source	Self-taught Mendelian genetics
Institutional support	National hybrid rice program
Built on recent work	Hybrid vigor in maize and sorghum
Setback overcome	Denounced in 1966
Barrier not overcome	Never elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Related barriers	Nutrition, conflict and violence

Sources

Also relevant: Bell, A., Chetty, R., Jaravel, X., Petkova, N., & Van Reenen, J. (2019). Who becomes an inventor in America? Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(2), 647-713. All references