Seawater hybrid rice to be grown throughout China by 2020

Beijing. June 12. Silkroadnews - Chinese agricultural scientist Yuan Longping announced his team had completed trial plantings of seawater hybrid rice, China Plus reports.
Hybrid rice of the new generation will first be experimentally planted in six provinces of China, and is expected to be grown across the country by 2020, Yuan said.
Yuan and his team have successfully landed hybrid rice in seawater in Shandong province in East China, receiving a record harvest of 500 kilograms per mu (0.07 ha).
Recently the same rice was also successfully planted in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. For the first time in the world, rice was successfully planted in the tropics.
According to Yuan, who is an academician of the Chinese Engineering Academy, molecular technology was used to develop hybrid third-generation rice.
Statistics show, there are about 200 million mu of saline-alkaline soil in China, which is suitable for newly-derived hybrid rice.
Yuan added that the hybrid rice can yield at least 30 billion kilograms each year.