Yuan Longping (; September 7, 1930May 22, 2021) was a Chinese agronomist and member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering known for developing the first hybrid rice varieties in the 1970s, part of the Green Revolution in agriculture. For his contributions, Yuan is known as the "Father of Hybrid Rice". Hybrid rice has since been grown in dozens of countries in Africa, America, and Asia—boosting food security and providing a robust food source in areas with a high risk of famine. The technology allowed China to sustain 20% of the global population on 9% of global arable land, an achievement in food security that won Yuan the 2004 World Food Prize. Early life and education Yuan was born at Peking Union Medical College Hospital in Beijing, China on September 7, 1930 to Yuan Xinglie and Hua Jing. He was the second of six siblings. His ancestral home is in De'an County, Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province in Southern China. During the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War, he moved with his family and attended school in many places, including Hunan, Chongqing, Hankou and Nanjing. He graduated from Southwest Agricultural College (now part of Southwest University) in 1953. Career Yuan began his teaching career at the Anjiang Agricultural School, Hunan Province. In the 1960s he had the idea of hybridizing rice to increase its yield after reading of similar research that was underway successfully in maize and sorghum. Undertaking this hybridization was important because the first generation of hybrids is typically more vigorous and productive than either parent. For the rest of his life Yuan devoted himself to the research and development of better rice varieties. The biggest problem was that rice is a self-pollinating plant. Hybridization requires separate male and female plants as parents. The small rice flowers contain both male and female parts. Although the male parts can be removed, carefully, by hand (to produce female-only flowers), this is not practical on a large scale. It was thus difficult to produce hybrid rice in large quantities. In 1961 he spotted a seed-head of wild hybrid rice. By 1964, Yuan hypothesized that naturally-mutated male-sterile rice could exist and could be used for the creation of new hybrid rice varieties. He and a student spent the summer searching for male sterile rice plants. Two years later he reported in a scientific publication that he had found a few individuals of male-sterile