It's not often that one person can be said to be responsible for feeding 60 million people. But then Yuan Longping has never been an ordinary person. Yuan, 74, a Chinese agricultural scientist, is widely acknowledged as having discovered the genetic basis of heterosis in rice - a breakthrough that helped lead to the development of hybrid rice. In the three decades that followed the discovery, hybrid rice has spread so that it is now planted on about half of China' rice area, resulting in a 20 percent higher yield over previously grown varieties.
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