China’s ‘Father of Hybrid Rice’ joins TikTok

By On Jan 11, 2021

Yuan Longping’s Douyin account attracted more than 15 million followers in just three days. / Screenshot by Douyin

Chinese agronomist Yuan Longping, famous for developing high-yielding rice varieties, joined the Douyin short video app over the weekend, known outside of China as TikTok, which attracted more than 15 million followers even before posting a post.

The “Chinese Pioneer Yuan Longping” account was opened on Saturday and has amassed a massive following of 15.3 million people as of Monday lunchtime.

Despite the account’s instant popularity, Yuan, known as China’s “father of hybrid rice,” is not yet active on the app, and his silence caused a stir in Douyin. “When will Grandpa Yuan Longping post?” became the hottest topic in the app on Sunday.

Users are thrilled that the 90-year-old scientist is joining the platform.

“I’ve followed him immediately since eating the rice he developed,” said one user. “He’s the real idol that millions of people should look out for,” said another.

Yuan has devoted himself to breeding rice varieties – a staple food in the country – with productive growth. China has to feed a fifth of the world’s population with just seven percent of the world’s arable land and six percent of its water. It’s a mammoth task that has benefited from the genius of the yuan who developed the world’s first hybrid rice in the 1970s. Since then, super-harvest varieties have repeatedly broken yield records.

Yuan Longping inspects a rice field in Changsha, central China’s Hunan Province on October 22, 2019. / GFP

In 2020, Yuan and his team managed to produce 1,500 kilograms of rice per mu (about 22.5 tons per hectare) in two growing seasons in central China’s Hunan Province. Double cultivated local rice provides an average of 700-800 kilograms per mu.

Yuan has also worked on growing seawater rice, which can thrive in salty alkaline soils. In an experiment last year, the average salt-resistant rice yield in eastern Jiangsu Province reached 802.9 kg per mu (about 12 tons per hectare), a new record.

The prominent scientist is already present on social media. On September 20, 2020, Yuan opened an account with Kuaishou, a major rival of Douyin, on the occasion of the third annual Chinese Peasant Harvest Festival, which takes place on September 22nd. There he shared agricultural knowledge and advanced rice growing concepts.

Yuan will host its first live broadcast on Douyin in a week, the company told Shanghai-based newspaper The Paper on Sunday.