Updated: 2016-10-21
Rice has been a staple food in China for centuries, but as the country develops, producing enough grain to satisfy rising demand is becoming a huge challenge. But a scientist from Zhanjiang may have found the answer to keeping rice on China's supermarket shelves for generations to come.
Over the last thirty years, Chen Risheng has developed a new strain of rice called sea-rice, a uniquely hardy type of grain that is able to grow in soil with very high saline-alkali content and is highly resistant to pests and diseases.
In a country with about 18.8 percent of the world's population but only seven percent of the world's arable land, sea-rice could be a game-changer as it will allow China to grow rice on swathes of land that previously had been considered unsuitable for agriculture due to the soil's high salt or alkaline content.
The central government has now thrown its weight behind developing sea-rice, and in October a new R&D center headed by China's "father of hybrid rice" Yuan Longping was set up in Qingdao, Shandong province to explore how sea-rice can be applied nationwide.
The decision also catapulted the unassuming Chen, a graduate of Zhanjiang Agricultural Academy who has been quietly developing sea-rice for the last 30 years, into the national spotlight, with his name appearing in People's Daily and Xinhua News Agency, China's official press agency.
Chen first discovered wild rice with a particularly high saline-alkali tolerance in 1986 in Zhanjiang's Suixi county.
His initial experiment with a batch of 522 seeds proved a success, and trials were extended to pilot areas across the country.
Chen continued developing sea-rice to increase yields throughout the next three decades, and in 2014 his sea-rice produced 150 kilograms per mu (2.25 tons per hectare), three times the amount produced in his initial trials.
This success convinced the Ministry of Agriculture to invest in sea-rice research, and the project has now been raised to the national level and allocated with much greater financial and labor resources.
Despite receiving numerous offers of well-paid jobs from foreign enterprises over the years, Chen always refused, insisting that he would remain faithful to the land where he made the discovery.
The new research center plans to plant 30 mu (2 hectares) of sea-rice next April, to be harvested next autumn.