With the passing of Chinese scientist Yuan Longping, China and the world have lost one of the greatest agricultural scientists on our planet, and I have lost a great friend, Kenneth Quinn, president emeritus of the World Food Prize Foundation, said.
Quinn, also vice chairman of the Yuan Longping International Rice Development Forum, shared his memory of the father of hybrid rice in a written interview with Xinhua on Sunday.
Yuan greatly reduced hunger and provided farmers with surplus income through his discovery of hybrid rice and the development of seeds that could triple and quadruple production during the early part of China s economic and agricultural transformation in the 1970s and 1980s, Quinn said.