After living through the Great Chinese Famine (1959-1961), which caused tens of millions of deaths, agronomist Yuan Longping begins in 1964 research the scientific community of the time considered practically unviable: developing hybrid rice varieties that would exploit heterosis — the superior vigor exhibited by the offspring of two genetically distinct parents compared to either parent alone. The technical obstacle was severe: rice is a predominantly self-pollinating plant, so systematically generating hybrids at commercial scale first required identifying rice lines with natural male sterility that would allow controlled crossing between different varieties. In 1970, Yuan and his team locate on Hainan Island a wild rice plant with male sterility, which they name "Wild Abortive", becoming the genetic basis of a three-line breeding system. In 1973, the team succeeds in cultivating the first high-yield hybrid rice variety, recording a production increase of approximately 20% over conventional varieties — enough, according to later estimates, to feed an additional seventy million people per year. Large-scale commercial cultivation begins in 1976, transforming China, which had suffered one of the largest famines in modern history just years before, into the world's largest rice producer. Yuan deliberately chose not to patent or monopolize the technology, donating varieties to the International Rice Research Institute in the 1980s and personally traveling to India, Madagascar, and Liberia to train local farmers. Hybrid rice is grown today in more than sixty countries and constitutes one of the individual agronomic advances with the greatest documented impact on reducing global hunger in the 20th century, comparable in scope to Norman Borlaug's work on wheat during the Green Revolution.