YUAN LONGPING BIOGRAPHY | DR. MONTY JONES BIOGRAPHY
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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations declared 2004 the International Year of Rice – the main staple food in over 30 countries in Africa, Asia, North America, and South America, and the Pacific region. Rice provides one-fifth of the world’s dietary energy; by contrast, wheat supplies 19 percent and maize, 5 percent.
To honor the FAO’s celebration of this crop, crucial to feeding and nourishing the world, the 2004 World Food Prize was given to two rice scientists who, working independently, each made miraculous breakthroughs that bettered the lives of countless human beings throughout the world. The 2004 World Food Prize Laureates were Professor Yuan Longping, director-general of the China National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Center in Hunan, China, and Dr. Monty Jones of Sierra Leone, a former senior rice breeder at the West Africa Rice Development Center and presently executive secretary of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa in Accra, Ghana.
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Prof. Yuan Longping
For his breakthrough achievement in developing the genetic materials and technologies essential for breeding high-yielding hybrid rice varieties, Prof. Yuan Longping was awarded the World Food Prize in 2004 – the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization’s International Year of Rice (more on Yuan Longping).
Born in Peking in 1930, Yuan Longping graduated from Southwest Agricultural College in China in 1953, and then taught crop genetics and breeding at Hunan Agricultural University. He began research there in hybrid rice development in 1964 and was transferred to the Hunan Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1971 to serve as a research professor.
Professor Yuan is widely acknowledged for his 1973 discovery of the genetic basis of heterosis in rice – a phenomenon in which the progeny of two distinctly different parents grow faster, yield more, and resist stress better than either parent. In developing his three-line system of hybrid rice, Professor Yuan and his team soon produced a commercial hybrid rice variety called Nan-you No. 2, which was released in 1974. With yields 20 percent higher than previous varieties, Professor Yuan’s new crop immediately began to improve food availability in China.
In the subsequent three decades, planting of this new crop has spread so widely that now almost half of China’s rice production area is planted in hybrid rice with a 20 percent higher yield over previous varieties. This translates into food to nourish approximately 60 million more people per year in China alone.
Beyond this exceptional accomplishment, Professor Yuan has built an additional legacy of combating food shortages and hunger. He has developed a new technique for increasing hybrid seed yields through restriction of self-pollination, an improved two-line system of hybrid rice, and other strategies to further improve hybrid rice. His colleagues have carried on his work with his collaboration and supervision to develop new strains of “super hybrid rice” that produce almost 10 tons per hectare. With higher yields, farmers have increased rice production while simultaneously shifting millions of hectares out of rice and into alternatives such as fish, vegetables, fruits, and other food and fiber crops, giving more balanced diets and a higher standard of living to rural Chinese families. Additionally, based on the new production technique Prof. Yuan developed in 1975 to obtain higher amounts of Nan-you No. 2 seed, China was able to establish its own hybrid seed industry, which today provides additional revenue and training opportunities to thousands of farmers.
The impact of Prof. Yuan’s ingenuity has been felt beyond China’s rice industry. Researchers and producers of other crops in China have successfully used the two-line system for rice to explore similar systems for hybrid sorghum and rapeseed with increased yields. He has also played a key role in developing hybrid rice throughout Asia and to Africa and the Americas. Since 1980, he has trained thousands of scientists and researchers from over 25 countries and has served as a chief consultant to the FAO. Farmers in more than ten other countries besides China, including the United States, have thus benefited from his work, gaining access to a technology they may otherwise never have enjoyed.
In addition to the 2004 World Food Prize, Prof. Yuan’s honors and awards include China’s State Supreme Science and Technology Award, the 2001 Magsaysay Award, the UN FAO Medal of Honor for Food Security, the 2004 Wolf Prize in Agriculture, and in 2007 he was named a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States; this is the highest honor in American science and engineering and Dr. Yuan is the first non-American NAS member from the Chinese agricultural science circle. Prof. Yuan currently directs China’s National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Center and is a member or leader of several national committees, conferences, and foundations that support agriculture, science, and technology in China.
Dr. Yuan continues his research in China today, setting a new target goal of 900 kg yield per mu (.066 hectares); this goal has risen from 700 kg per mu in 1997 to 800 kg in 2000 and 2004. Recent reports show of trial plantings in 20 Hunan counties, 18 have yielded successful results. Currently, Dr. Yuan’s “super rice” is grown in over half of China’s rice paddies and worldwide in more than 20 other nations.
Professor Yuan Longping’s pioneering research has helped transform China from food deficiency to food security within three decades. His accomplishments and clear vision helped create a more abundant food supply and, through food security, a more stable world. Professor Yuan’s distinguished life’s work has caused many to call him the “Father of Hybrid Rice,” while his continuing research offers even more promise for world food security and adequate nutrition for the world’s poor.
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Dr. Monty Jones
For his breakthrough achievements in creating a rice variety specifically bred for the ecological and agricultural conditions in Africa, Dr. Monty Jones won the World Food Prize in 2004 – the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization’s International Year of Rice.
Born in Sierra Leone, Dr. Jones was educated there, receiving a bachelor’s degree from the University of Sierra Leone, and at Birmingham University in the United Kingdom, where he took a master’s degree in 1979, a doctorate in plant biology in 1983, and an honorary Doctor of Science in 2005. He began his career in 1975 with the West Africa Rice Development Agency, one of the international research centers sponsored by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, in its Mangrove Swamp Rice Research Project in his home country. He continued to work as a rice breeder and researcher through the 1980s.
In 1991, Dr. Jones was appointed head of the Upland Rice Breeding Program at WARDA, then located in Côte d’Ivoire. It was in this position in 1994 that he made his exceptional breakthrough achievement in combining Asian and African rice varieties to develop NERICA, a “New Rice for Africa” uniquely suited to poor African rice farmers.
Dr. Jones had, since the 1970s, seen that native African rice varieties grew most successfully in the continent’s alkaline soils and conditions of varying moisture; however, their yield potential was remarkably low, especially compared to the rice varieties that had been introduced from Asia some 500 years earlier. These more productive varieties, in contrast, were limited by low resistance to African pests and diseases and poor adaptation to the soil and climate. Combining the species had been attempted before, but never with success; early in the cross-breeding process, the progeny rice varieties always developed sterility.
Dr. Jones led his staff to organize and classify all available rice varieties – including 1,500 accessions of the native O. glaberrima species, which were in danger of extinction. From this collection, Dr. Jones and his team began the painstaking process of selecting parents for combination traits, crossing them to produce offspring, and backcrossing the offspring to fix varietal traits from the two species and overcome the genetic barrier. After three years of research and work, the first stable and fertile cross was produced.
With the ability to resist weeds, survive droughts, and thrive on poor soils gained from its African parent, and the trait of higher productivity from its Asian ancestor, NERICA is a crop capable of increasing farmers’ harvests by 25 to 250 percent. It has been especially valuable in the drier upland regions, where much of West Africa’s rice is grown and yields can now reach 4 to 6 tons per hectare. In addition, its three-month harvest time – as opposed to the six months required by its parent species – allows African farmers to harvest NERICA rice during the annual “hunger period” and double-crop it with nutritionally rich legumes and vegetables or high-value fiber crops in one growing season. For the consumer, especially poor or malnourished families, NERICA provides increased amounts of protein at a lower price. The nutritional, economic, and political impact of NERICA on countries that have been importing $1 billion of rice annually is difficult to overstate.
Dr. Jones continued to show leadership and innovation in the next phase of bringing NERICA rice to farmers in Africa’s villages. He built partnerships among WARDA and policy makers, non-governmental organizations, and research and extension services and outlined a plan for community-based, participatory, and gender-sensitive programs that would both rapidly disseminate the seeds and allow rice farmers – a majority of whom are women – an active role in planting and evaluating the hybrids and continuing outreach in rural areas. With the money he won as part of the 2004 World Food Prize, Dr. Jones has continued to support and invest in the extension of these programs in Sierra Leone and the rest of Africa.
This work has led to the rapid development of more than 3000 NERICA lines. As demonstrated in pilot projects undertaken in Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, and Togo, NERICA stands to benefit 20 million rice farmers and 240 million consumers in West Africa alone, in addition to other parts of Africa and the world. In Nigeria, NERICA has resulted in over 30 percent expansion in upland rice cultivation. Guinea’s rice imports reduced by 50 percent in three years, and the country became a net exporter of the grain in 2005.
In 2002, Dr. Jones was appointed the executive secretary of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, based in Ghana. At FARA, he oversees advocacy and coordination efforts in support of regional research, with the goal of increasing agricultural growth by at least 6 percent annually by 2020 as well as fostering ongoing economic growth, alleviating poverty, and improving food security for Africa’s people. Because of his work, Time magazine, in 2007, named Dr. Jones as one of the world’s most influential people. According to WARDA Director General Papa Abdoulaye Seck, “Dr. Monty Jones has demonstrated by his remarkable contribution that is it possible to reshape the agricultural map of our continent through the African creative genius.”
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