A team of rice experts led by Yuan Longping, a leading agricultural scientist known as "the father of hybrid rice" in China, announced on Friday at an international forum on a saline-alkali tolerant type of rice called seawater rice that it has obtained 400,000 hectares of saline-alkali lands nationwide for producing and commercializing the rice this year. "Contracts have been signed with companies and local governments of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and Gansu, Qinghai and Heilongjiang provinces," said Zhang Guodong, executive deputy director of Qingdao Saline-Alkali Tolerant Rice Research and Development Center, led by Yuan.Yuan, 90, who is chairman of the International Seawater Rice Forum, made a speech at the two-day event in Sanya, Hainan province . "We will strive to turn about 66,667 hectares of saline-alkali lands into sa
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