The team of YUAN Longpin, dubbed “China’s father of hybrid rice”, has announced plans to plant a saline-alkali tolerant rice which they developed on 6.6 million ha over the next 8 – 10 years. Last year, the team planted already 6,667 hectares of this variety in ten bases across the country. The highest average yield of over 12 t per ha were recorded in Jiangsu Province. China has about 100 million hectares of saline-alkali soil, of which about one-fifth could be ameliorated to arable soil.
CAS news release, January 16, 2021
China attempts to turn 6.6 million ha of saline-alkali land into rice paddies