'Super' rice produces super harvest

A super rice breed called chujing No 28, has produced a harvest of 14.3 metric tons a hectare at a demonstration base in the Chuxiong Yi autonomous prefecture in Southwest China's Yunnan province.

To ensure the accuracy of the yield amount, a team of agricultural experts supervised the harvest on Monday, randomly selecting three plots of the 6.7-hectare planting field.

"The harvest means that China can produce rice both with high yield and good quality, which is a major technical problem for rice breeding," said Li Kaibin, a researcher at the agricultural research and promotion institute in Chuxiong.

Rice is the staple food for more than 50 percent of the world's population and about 60 percent of China's 1.3 billion people.

So far, China has approved 96 varieties of new super rice strains, with planting areas of 7.4 million hectares, or nearly 25 percent of the country's rice fields, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The country plans to reach average yields of nearly 7 tons of rice a hectare by 2020, from 6.57 tons a hectare now, to ensure adequate food supply for its rising population, the ministry said.

"So far, China only has a few top-quality super rice strains, which are resistant to pests and drought, as well as suitable for large-scale planting," Guo Libin, an official from the ministry said at a working conference in Chuxiong on Monday.

The ministry aims to develop more than 30 new super rice strains by 2015, he said.