The Journey - Hybrid Rice in the United States

In 1964 a Chinese rice breeder, Yuan Longping, discovered a rice plant that was the genetic key to the successful development of high yielding hybrid rice. At that time, China was a secretive communist state where self-pollinating varietal rice was grown on collective farms using labor intensive practices. Forty years later hybrid rice was being grown commercially in the United States using mechanized farming practices. By 2022 two-thirds of the rice being grown in the south-eastern USA was hybrid rice. This book describes the journey across four decades and the chain of events and the many people involved in this success. Extraordinary political and technological changes occurred during this time some of which are described as they relate to the technology and its implementation.