China establishes national lab for super grain

China established a national laboratory for hybrid rice research Saturday in central Hunan Province, aiming to cultivate rice that will bring yields of 15 tonnes per hectare. The lab was established in Changsha City, capital of Hunan, with the support of Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Center and Wuhan University. Yuan Longping, Zhu Yingguo and Xie Hua'an, top scientists in cultivating hybrid grains, will lead researches in the lab. The goal of the lab is to cultivate a super grain that can yield more than one tonne of rice per mu of farmland, or 15 tonnes per hectare, said Yuan Longping, academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering and head of the lab's researches. China has cultivated a rice variety that can yield about 900 kg per mu. "To reach a higher level, researchers will have to combine conventional hybrid techniques with molecular technologies," Yuan said. Another goal of the lab is to promote super grain to other parts of the world to benefit more people, he added. Hybrid rice on average produce 7.2 tonnes of rice per hectare, 1.4 tonnes more than traditional varieties. Around 600 million hectares of paddy fields in China are planted with hybrid rice, or about 57 percent of the total. "The productivity of one tonne per mu is not our ultimate goal. We believe hybrid rice can yield 1.5 tonnes of rice per mu in the fertile land of Changsha," he said. The lab also has a transgenic research facility. "We cannot simply give up scientific research for some safety concerns. Researches into transgenic grain must be continued," Yuan said.