A team of Chinese agronomists once led by Yuan Longping (1930-2021), dubbed the "father of hybrid rice," has made a new progress in growing rice on saline-alkali soil in Rudong County, Nantong City of Jiangsu Province.  

The rice breed, developed by the team, achieved a yield of 19.55 tons in one plot of saline soil of 26.7 mu (1.78 hectares), or 732 kg per mu on average. 

"The actual output is higher than our expectation. This breed has a good rice quality. The yield is lower than the variety used last year and two other varieties grown this year, but it’s already quite high to have 732 kg per mu,” said Yu Yongjie, deputy director of Rudong’s Crop Cultivation Station. 

Yuan’s team started the project to grow rice on 10,000 mu of saline-alkali soil land in ten places in the country, including the reclamation area in Rudong, also the only such experiment site in Jiangsu. The breed used last year achieved a yield of over 800 kg per mu on average. The team aims to realize breakthroughs in quality and yield. 

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