Yuan Longping, the Chinese scientist known worldwide as the "father of hybrid rice", and the Chinese University of Hong Kong Tuesday announced a cooperation program on developing the 3rd generation of Chinese Hybrid Rice.

The program aims at further increasing the yield of hybrid rice as well as enhancing its quality and stress tolerance with the help of recent progress in the decoding of rice genome and traditional breeding techniques.

Professor Yuan anticipates a 20 to 25 percent increase in the yield of the 3rd generation super-hybrid rice over the current Chinese hybrid rice.

"We hope the yield of the hybrid rice will rise to 900 kg per mu in 2008 or even in 2006," Yuan said.

Currently, rice provides the major source of food for half of the world's population and hybrid rice occupies about half of the total rice cultivation areas in China. Its yield accounts for 57 percent of the total rice production in the country.

Chinese hybrid rice developed by Professor Yuan produces an average of 20 percent more crop than normal, benefiting 100 million people per year. The market value of Chinese hybrid rice is RMB 100 billion yuan (12.1 billion U.S. dollars).

Professor Yuan will conduct the research on 3rd generation of hybrid rice with professor Samuel Sun and professor Hon-Ming Lam of the department of biology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and professor Maurice Ku of the School of Biological Sciences at Washington State University.

Professor Sun has cloned the world's first plant gene in 1980. Since then, he has been actively involved in crop improvement programs using biotechnology.

Professor Ku, an expert in photosynthesis regulation, reported the successful transformation of a major photosynthetic gene from maize into rice in 2000. The photosynthetic capacity and yield of the transformed rice were increased up to 30 percent.

Professor Lam's research are specializing in metabolic engineering of nitrogen assimilation and molecular mechanism of stress tolerance, processes that are closely related to plant growth and development.

"We have a very strong team involving Chinese scientists from China, Hong Kong and the U.S.A.," Yuan said.