China is willing to contribute to global food security and calls for joint efforts to end global hunger and poverty, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Monday to mourn China’s “father of hybrid rice” Yuan Longping.

File photo taken on Aug. 19, 2013 shows Yuan Longping inspecting the trial plantation of hybrid rice at Guanyang County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Chinese scientist Yuan Longping, renowned for developing the first hybrid rice strain that pulled countless people out of hunger, died of illness at 91 on Saturday. (File photo: Xinhua)

“Yuan, who cultivated the world's first high-yield hybrid rice strain, has not only earned respect from Chinese people but also the global community,” Zhao said. “His hybrid rice research has been saving millions of people from hunger globally. His death is a great lose to both China and the world.”

The export of China's hybrid rice technology started when China was opening up. In 1979, China provided hybrid rice seeds to another country for the first time, and 40 years later China's hybrid rice has been planted in dozens of countries in Africa, the Americas, and Asia.

In the past 40 years, Yuan and his team have been providing advice to India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, the United States and other countries. He has trained more than 14,000 hybrid rice professionals for more than 80 developing countries through international training courses.

Zhao added that Yuan's dream is to promote hybrid rice around the world and to end global hunger. China has achieved a great wonder, feeding nearly one-fifth of the world's population with less than 9 percent of the world's total land. "We believe Yuan's dream will come true one day. China is willing to contribute more to global food security, " said Zhao.

(Compiled by Yang Jiaqi)