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Yuan Longping was born in 1930 in Beijing.His parents wanted him to pursue a career in science or medicine.However，what concerned him most was that farmers often had poor harvests and sometimes even had a serious （1）
shortage
shortage
of food to eat.To （2）
tackle
tackle
this crisis，he chose to study agriculture and received an education at Southwest Agricultural College in Chongqing.
After graduating in 1953，he worked as a researcher.Yuan Longping realised that larger fields were not the solution.Instead，farmers needed to （3）
boost
boost
yields in the fields they had.How this could be done was a challenging question at the time.Yuan was （4）
convinced
convinced
that the answer could be found in the creation of hybrid rice.A hybrid is a cross between two or more varieties of a species.One characteristic of hybrids is that they usually （5）
generate
generate
a higher yield than conventional crops.However，whether it was possible to develop a hybrid of self-pollinating plants such as rice was a matter of great debate.The common （6）
assumption
assumption
then was that it could not be done.Through intense effort，Yuan （7）
overcame
overcame
enormous technical difficulties to develop the first hybrid rice that could be used for farming in 1974 This hybrid enabled farmers to （8）
expand
expand
their output greatly.
Today，it is （9）
estimated
estimated
that about 60 percent of domestic rice consumption in China is comprised of crops （10）
attained
attained
from Yuan's hybrid strains，and his strains have allowed China's farmers to produce around 200 million tons of rice per year.Yuan's innovation has helped feed not just China，but many other countries that depend on rice as well，such as India and Vietnam.Because of his invaluable contributions，Yuan Longping has received numerous awards both in China and abroad.
