Though the survival of our world should not be linked to the efforts of a few elite, Yuan Longping is definitely someone who has made a bigger contribution. Known as "the father of hybrid rice," the Chinese agronomist has seen the grain species he developed grown in as much as 50 percent of China's total rice fields, with an annual yield enough to feed 60 million people.

At a forum on November 18, Yuan revealed that his three-stage super hybrid rice development program is close to maximum output, which, in 2010, will drive the rice harvest per mu (a Chinese measurement equivalent to 1/15 hectare) up to 900 kg. This figure climbed to 700 kg in 2000 and 800 kg in 2004 respectively. More importantly, Yuan said that the potential yield of super hybrid rice is as high as 1,500 kg per mu.

Yuan, 77, began research on breeding high-yield hybrid rice in 1964, and, in 1973, he discovered the genetic basis of heterosis in rice, a phenomenon in which the progeny of two distinctly different parents grow faster, yield more and resist better than either parent. On this basis, Yuan and his team soon produced Nan You No.2, a commercial variety with yields 20 percent higher than those of previous species, and released it in 1974. The new crop has greatly improved China's food availability.

Yuan's other achievements include developing a new technique for increasing hybrid seed yields through restriction of self-pollination, facilitating the establishment of the hybrid rice seed production industry in China and developing new strategies to further improve hybrid rice. He has also spread his techniques for hybrid rice throughout Asia and to Africa and the Americas, and trained thousands of scientists and researchers from over 25 countries.

In 2000, Yuan was awarded the inaugural State Supreme Science and Technology Award of China. On his long list of honors there are also the 2001 Magsaysay Award, the UN FAO Medal of Honor for Food Security, the 2004 World Food Prize and the 2004 Wolf Prize in Agriculture.

"Professor Yuan Longping's pioneering research has helped transform China from food deficiency to food security within three decades. His accomplishments and clear vision helped create a more abundant food supply and, through food security, a more stable world."

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization

"First we must have enough food, then comes eating well."

Yuan Longping, talking about his firm belief in the importance of food security for developing countries

"We now have $1.4 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, and I tell my foreign friends I have never been under more pressure."

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, describing China's huge foreign exchange reserves as a symbol of both strength and huge responsibility when he delivered a speech at the National University of Singapore on November 19

"Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas oncentrations were to be stabilized."

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its report released on November 17

"This work represents a tremendous scientific milestone-the biological equivalent of the Wright Brothers' first airplane."

Dr. Robert Lanza, who owns a company engaged in the research of stem cell cloning, after scientists in the United States and Japan created the equivalent of embryonic stem cells from ordinary skin cells, a breakthrough that could someday produce new treatments for disease without the explosive moral questions of embryo cloning

"They get our oil and give us a worthless piece of paper."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, blaming U.S. President George W. Bush's policies for the decline of the dollar and its negative effect on other countries, when he addressed the media after the close of the summit of the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries on November 18

"Cooking this data would be almost impossible."

Dr. Paul De Lay, Unaids's director of monitoring and policy, replying to the idea that earlier estimates of people infected with HIV were deliberately inflated. After releasing new figures on November 21 showing that the global AIDS epidemic is smaller than it previously reported, the AIDS-fighting agency denied that it had inflated estimates for years in an alarmist effort to raise funds