Yuan Longping, dubbed as "father of high-yielding crossbred rice", has urged the country's agrotechnicians to bring more practical technologies to the countryside to improve farming productivity.

Yuan, a member of Chinese Academy of Engineering and also a recent member of the National Academy of Sciences of America, said innovations in agriculture-related technologies and the promotion and application of these technologies are key elements in upgrading the productivity in the countryside.

The agrotechnicians should take the responsibility of cultivating new technologies and convert them into real productivity, said the 77-year-old scientist.

The urbanite-turned-farmer encouraged the technicians to breed good seeds for farmers and come up with better land cultivation technologies.

The big population of farmers, in the meantime, should be offered with trainings and guidance on the application of these technologies, Yuan said.

Yuan's achievement in cultivating high-yielding hybrid rice has enabled China to raise 22 percent of the world's population on merely seven percent of the world's arable land, since the country initiated the research into the hybrid rice in the 1960s.

The country planted more than 373 million hectares of crossbred rice with increased production totaling to more than 520 billion kg from 1976 to 2006.

More than 20 countries had used the hybrid rice technology to cultivate two million hectares of hybrid rice by the end of 2006.

(Xinhua News Agency May 29, 2007)