Yuan Longping, a Chinese scientist who developed higher-yield rice varieties, died Saturday at a hospital in the southern city of Changsha, the Xinhua News agency reported. He was 91.
Yuan spent his life researching rice. In the 1970s, Yuan developed a hybrid strain of rice that recorded an annual yield 20 percent higher than existing varieties.
Yuan and his team worked with other countries to address issues of food security as well as malnutrition.
In his later years, Yuan continued doing research. In 2017, working with a Hunan agricultural school, he helped create a strain of low-cadmium indica rice for areas suffering from heavy metal pollution, reducing the amount of cadmium in rice by more than 90 percent.
