Yangcheng Evening News All-Media Reporter Yi Zhina Cinema Correspondent Ren Haihong
When talking about hybrid rice, people often think of Yuan Longping, the “father of Chinese hybrid rice”. In fact, around 1930, a Lingnan scientist, 42 years older than Yuan Longping, had already begun to conduct hybrid rice experiments. This world-renowned scientist is Ding Ying, the first president of South China Agricultural University (the predecessor of South China Agricultural University). He is recognized by the industry as the “father of Chinese rice-farming science.”
Ding Ying
Ding Ying is the first rice scientist in China to hybridize cultivated rice with wild rice and successfully breed new varieties. In 1934, he successfully cultivated the world’s first new hybrid rice variety “Zhongshan No. 1” with wild rice ties. In 1936, he selected the artificial hybrid rice variety “Thousands of ears” that can produce thousands of rice grains per ear, which caused a sensation in the entire East Asian rice cropping world.
In 1955, Ding Ying was elected as an academician (member of the academician) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1957, Premier Zhou Enlai personally appointed him as the first president of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Ministry of Agriculture, and praised him as “the outstanding agricultural scientist of the Chinese people.”
Ding Ying has served as the dean and professor of the School of Agricultural Sciences of Sun Yat-sen University and the South my country Agricultural Sciences of Sun Yat-sen University. She is also a pioneer in agricultural higher education in China. She has been concerned about agricultural education in modern China all her life. In 196Cinema, he edited and published “Chinese Rice Cultivation”, which is the first monograph on rice textbooks with Chinese characteristics. This year, the crop science discipline created by Ding Ying helped South China Agricultural University to become a national “Double First-Class” university.
Reflecting on the past, this outstanding scientist who is diligent, patriotic and dedicated is worthy of our long-term remembrance.
Two important “12 years” in life
On November 25, 1888, Ding Ying was born in a poor peasant family in Gaozhou County (formerly Maoming County) in Guangdong Province. His father Ding Lintai knew the hardships of uneducatedness and insisted on borrowing money to support his children to go to school. In 1906, Ding Ying was admitted to Gaozhou Middle School in the county from a private school. He decided to apply for the agricultural sciences, “to connect farmers who cannot suffer all their hardships with modern science.”
In 1910, Ding Ying was admitted to the Museum of Guangdong Higher Normal School. Due to her excellent grades, she later received the opportunity to study in Japan for public expenses.
In 1919, when Ding Ying was about to graduate from the Fifth Higher Education in Kumamoto, Japan, the May Fourth Movement broke out, and Tokyo students took to the streets to march., was bloody suppressed by Japanese military and police. Ding Ying was angry and didn’t want to stay for a long time. In addition, her family was short of money at the time, so she decided to drop out of school and return to China. After returning to China, he taught at Gaozhou Middle School and Gaozhou Agricultural School, and served as the supervisor of the Guangdong Provincial Department of Education. But Ding Ying couldn’t stand the habits of the officialdom at that time and it was difficult to realize her desire to “save the country through science”. In 1921, he went to Japan again and was admitted to the first part of the agricultural discipline of the Tokyo Imperial University to study agronomy. In 1924, he graduated from a bachelor’s degree and returned to China.
Ding Ying studied in Japan for 12 years. He not only mastered solid theoretical knowledge of modern agricultural science, but also inspired his strong patriotism and national self-esteem due to various foreign encounters. He was determined to “save the country through education” and “save the country through science.”
Professor Ni Genjin, a member of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and director of the China Agricultural Historical Heritage Institute of South China Agricultural University, has been committed to collecting and sorting Ding Ying’s relevant information for a long time. In 2013, he discovered at the Archives of Tokyo University in Japan that Ding Ying completed the Japanese undergraduate thesis “Comparative Study on the Quality of Rice” in 1924, and was carefully preserved by the school in the form of a 16-open pencil manuscript, which proved that Ding Ying’s thesis at that time had received considerable attention.
After returning to China after returning from school, Ding Ying was hired as a professor by the School of Agricultural Sciences of Guangdong University (the predecessor of the School of Agricultural Sciences of Sun Yat-sen University).
In order to increase my country’s grain production and end the history of eating “foreign rice”, Ding Ying actively carried out research on the rules of rice irrigation and fertilizer absorption, conducted a large number of investigations into the problem of grain production in Guangdong, wrote articles such as “Improving Guangdong Province Rice Plan” and “Salvation Method Plan”, and also suggested that the government allocate 1% of the “foreign rice import tax” every year as rice research funds. Unfortunately, the government of the Republic of China did not pay attention to agricultural production and its productivity was low. Ding Ying realized that cultivating good seeds was the only feasible method of increasing production at that time.
In 1927, Ding Ying took out part of his salary savings to supplement the scarce scientific research funds, walked out of the campus with his colleagues and students, and planned to build my country’s first professional rice farming experimental base – Nanlu Rice Breeding Farm in Gongguanwei, Maoming County, Guangdong Province.
From 1927 to 1939, another 12 years. Ding Ying and his companions successively established the Shipai Rice Farm Testing Farm and a total of 6 rice test sub-farms in Shatian (Dongguan), Dongjiang, Hanjiang, Beijiang, etc., and comprehensively carried out research on pure rice breeding and hybrid breeding.
These two important “12 years” lay a solid theoretical foundation for Ding Ying on the one handOn the other hand, he has given him full practice and laid the foundation for his research and development in rice cultivation science.
In 1963, Lu Yonggen (3rd from right) followed Academician Ding Ying (3rd from left) to repeatedly make “first” in the Yellow River Irrigation District, Ningxia.
Xie Zhengsheng, director of the Cultural and Cultural Museum (Archives, South China Agricultural Museum), mentioned in an interview with Yangcheng Evening News reporters. Since 1924, Ding Ying has actively engaged in rice cultivation research and has cultivated 110 rice varieties. Among them, rice system breeding was carried out, and 84 excellent water rice varieties were bred successively; 26 new hybrid rice varieties were bred. He is the first rice scientist in my country to hybridize new varieties with cultivated rice and wild rice, and has created a new way to utilize my country’s rich rice genetic resources.
At that time, the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of Guangdong University was located in the area of Nonglin Road, Guangzhou. In 1926, Ding Ying found a wild rice plant in the swamp at the end of the rhino road near Komiks at the school. He named the wild rice seed “RhinoCinema“. After 8 years of repeated screening, it was bred to “Zhongshan No. 1”, which is the world’s first new hybrid rice variety with wild rice ties. This attempt greatly alleviated the food shortage of that year.
In 1936, he selected and bred a rice hybrid with as many as 1,000 grains per ear, commonly known as “Thousand Grain Ears” from the offspring of artificial hybridization of the rice planted in South China and the wild rice seeds of India. This discovery shocked China and the world and made great inspiration for the research on exploring the high-yield potential of rice.
Later, he continued to try new rice seeds that were more suitable for the people, and used systematic breeding varieties to hybridize with Indian wild rice, and then carried out hybrid breeding between early-mature, dwarf and relatively large ear varieties, which continued for more than 40 years. On this basis, for more than half a century, the generation of rice breeders have been committed to the research of “Zhongshan No. 1” and its derivative varieties, and have developed at least 8 generations of 95 varieties, with a cumulative promotion area of more than 123.69 million mu.
In 2003, Ding Ying’s student and assistant and the second principal of Huanong Academician Lu Yonggen pointed out at the first National Wild Rice Conference: “Academician Ding Ying is worthy of being the father of China’s wild rice germplasm resources.”
After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Ding Ying was trusted, paid attention and valued by the Party and the government.He was elected as a representative of the first and second National People’s Congress and vice chairman of the first and second Guangdong Provincial Political Consultative Conferences, as well as vice chairman of the first China Association for Science and Technology.
There are countless “firsts” that Ding Ying has set in her life, but he never takes these contributions into consideration. In 1961, his editor-in-chief of “Chinese Rice Cultivation”, published, which is the first monograph on rice textbooks with Chinese characteristics in my country.
South ChinaKomiksLi Jinpei, a professor at South China Agricultural University, former member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and former vice chairman of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, recalled that Ding Ying had initially completed most of the first drafts of the book as early as 1958. At that time, everyone suggested that he publish it in his personal name, but Ding Ying insisted on exerting collective strength. He personally invited some domestic experts to participate in the writing of Cinema, such as asking Mr. Bao Wenkui to write “Selected Rice Seeds”, Ma E and Chen Yiwu wrote “Wheel Planting”, Zhao Shanhuan wrote “Pest Control”, etc., and finally integrated and handed over to the state for publication.
In the early 1960s, Ding Ying presided over the “Study on the Reaction Characteristics of Chinese Rice Varieties to Light Temperature Conditions”, which is also a rare scientific research collaboration in my country. He organized 12 domestic scientific research institutions to coordinate with 8 provinces and regions to set up 8 experimental points and two attached points to participate in the research. In 1963, at the suggestion of Ding Ying, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences and South China Academy of Agricultural Sciences jointly created my country’s first rice ecology research room, gathering forces from all parties to conduct rice ecology research.
Ding Ying’s former residence at South China Agricultural University Yangcheng Evening News All-Media Reporter Yi Zhina
Clearly put forward the origin of human cultivation of rice seeds in southern China
Wanbe Takeshi Watanabe’s Japanese agricultural historian in 1989 when he was editing the book “The Origin of Rice Farming in China”, he called Ding Ying the “father of Chinese rice fruiting” for the first time.
The Origin of Rice in China contains one of Ding Ying’s major contributions, which is his article “The Origin and Evolution of Cultivated Rice Seeds in China” published in 1957, which clearly stated that human cultivated rice seeds originated in southern China.
Ding Ying also clarified some mistakes in the article Babaylan‘s misstatement. For example, in 1928, Japanese scholar Shimoba Kato and others wrote an article to divide cultivated rice into two subspecies: Japanese type and Indian type. They even believe that part of China’s cultivated rice comes from India, and also called the japonica rice that has been cultivated in China for thousands of years as the “Japanese type”. Ding Ying has consulted a large number of ancient agricultural books and combined himself in my country in the 1920s.The fact that perennial wild rice was found in the tropical areas of South China. After multiple research, it was finally determined that the perennial ordinary wild rice in my country is the ancestor of Asian rice seeds, while the Chinese rice seeds originated in South China. Ding Ying believes that more than 2,100 years ago, ancient Chinese books have clearly recorded the geographical distribution and characteristic characteristics of the two major types of japonica and indica based on the “stick and non-stick” of rice. He changed the Japanese and Indian types divided by the Japanese into japonica subspecies and indica subspecies, pointing out that Japanese rice species were passed down from my country. These conclusions were later recognized internationally.
It is reported that “The Origin and Evolution of Cultivated Rice Seeds in China” won the 1978 National Science Conference Award.
The “practical worker” in the history of agricultural education
Ding Ying is a pioneer in higher agricultural education in my country and a visionary people’s educator.
His student He Yizan recorded in “Biography of Professor Ding Ying”: In 1940, Sun Yat-sen University, which once moved to Chengjiang, Yunnan, decided to return to northern Guangdong. Ding Ying was appointed as the dean of Zhongda Agriculture College in a dangerous situation. He overcame many difficulties and tried every means to strengthen the teaching staff and improve the school conditions, which attracted many aspiring young people to study. In the early days of Guangzhou’s liberation, Ding Ying took on another important task and served as the dean of the institute for the second time. In a short period of time, the Agricultural College of Sun Yat-sen University, which was severely injured by the war, restored normal teaching order; in 1952, the departments of universities across the country were adjusted, and the agricultural colleges of Sun Yat-sen University, Lingnan University and Guangxi University were partially merged to form the South China Agricultural College, and Ding Ying became the first dean; in 1957, he was appointed as the first dean of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and also served as the dean of South China Agricultural College.
“Holding education to revitalize China’s agriculture” is Ding Ying’s consistent guiding ideology for running schools. In the early 1950s, Ding Ying encouraged the students of the South China Agricultural College to “be responsible for the task of socialist agricultural transformation and construction with enough courage and confidence.” “We must love agriculture, farmers, rural areas, agricultural production, sacrifice current personal interests, and devote ourselves to the interests of the long-term farmers in order to achieve the goal of serving agricultural production.” He emphasized that “this is the minimum condition for our agricultural scientists.”
Ding Ying attaches great importance to the educational method that combines teaching, scientific research, and production (promotion). The six rice crop test sites he built not only promoted local agricultural production, but also closely cooperated with teaching and cultivated a scientific and educational team. This successful experience has created a new situation in the agricultural research industry in Guangdong Province, and is promoting the synchronization between agricultural colleges and agricultural research institutions.It has played an important role in developing and promoting the cooperation of the “three rural” (District of Agriculture, Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and Academy of Agricultural Sciences). Through his joint efforts with his colleagues, Sun Yat-sen University’s Agricultural College had become an agricultural college with 8 departments and a complete range of experimental research institutions; South China Agricultural College was established and became one of the few comprehensive agricultural universities in China with multi-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary research institutions such as agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, sericulture, and agricultural machinery. Today, Huanong has the special collection of Chinese agricultural historical documents with the largest collection of ancient agricultural books in the world, which was also established with the strong support of Ding Ying at that time.
According to Professor Huanong and famous rice expert Wu Zhuonian, in 1963, Teacher Ding Ying personally led the Cinema team to inspect the Northwest Rice Area at the age of 75. Later, his condition worsened sharply. Even though he “pressed the liver pain area with a pillow, he was still sweating all over.” He insisted on completing the inspection report in Jinan, and agreed to send it back to the Beijing hospital. After being diagnosed with advanced liver cancer, he passed away after only 20 days of hospitalization.
Ding Ying said as she died, “I have never been lazy in my life.”
(Data photo provided by South China Agricultural University)
[Interview]
Huaong’s selection as the “Double First-Class” cannot be separated from him
Yangcheng Evening News All-Media Reporter: You have been responsible for the maintenance and re-exhibition of Ding Ying’s memorial room, presided over the “Academician Ding Ying Academic Growth Data Collection Project” by the National Association for Science and Technology, and undertake a lot of work. How do you evaluate Academician Ding Ying?
Ni Genjin (Member of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and Director of the Institute of Agricultural Historical Heritage, South China Agricultural University): He is a very pure scientist, a person who devotes himself to agriculture and concentrates on research. He did not seek fame, but was a humble gentleman. He was once known as the leader of the “Four Gentlemen” of the Agricultural College. He was famous for not putting on his own. He has written so many articles, and has never written a single article that criticizes others. His “public image” is also quite low-key, he almost never accepts interviews, but he always responds positively and enthusiastically to students and self-study young people. He is active in the fields, is also diligent in writing, has a considerable number of research articles, and is one of the best in the Agricultural College.
Yangcheng Evening News All-Media Reporter: What do you think Ding Ying’s early rice cultivation research has affected later generations?
Ni GenBabaylanJin: Ding Ying is the “father of Chinese rice-farming studies”. In the agricultural and scientific community in China and the international communityKomiks has a very high academic status. Professor Wang Chunfa, director of the National Museum of China, once said that Ding Ying is a Chinese scholar who can talk to the world’s top scholars.
Professor Ding Ying has developed research fields, excellent academic style, advanced research methods, etc. have been passed down and promoted by future generations. In terms of the discipline of agricultural history research that I am engaged in, in 1926, Ding Ying discovered wild rice at the end of the rhino road and began to explore how the ancestors of the Chinese people domesticated it into cultivated rice. This research work is the starting point of the research of the discipline of agricultural history of South China Agricultural University, and one of the starting points of the establishment of the Chinese Agricultural History Discipline, and the prelude to the research on the origin of agriculture in China.
Yangcheng Evening News All MediaCinema reporter: Huanong is now listed on the national “Double First-Class” construction university list, and we can also see the shining of the “Ding Ying spirit”.
Ni Genjin: This is absolutely possible href=”https://comicmov.com/”>CinemaReview it.
This year, the first-level discipline crop science that was included in the national “Double First-Class” university discipline list is the first-level discipline crop science. Our discipline has a long history and profound background, and Professor Ding Ying has made an indelible contribution. Over the past hundred years, Huanong has successively introduced more than 10,000 agricultural professionals, including five academicians including Ding Ying, Lu Yonggen, Huang Yaoxiang, Lin Hongxuan, and Liu Yaoguang. Training for the country raising high-quality newcomers of the era who knows and loves farmers and has the ability to strengthen and promote agriculture has truly been implemented as the school’s educational goals. At present, the discipline culture with “Ding Ying spirit” and “Lu Yonggen’s advanced deeds” as the core is constantly being promoted and passed down.
【Extension】
Ding Ying and his “academician” disciple Ding Ying was elected as an academician (member of the academician) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955, and also served as the Communications Institute of the Democratic German Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Soviet Union’s Quansu Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences Babaylan, an honorary academician of the Czechoslovak Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
He practiced his actions and inspired future generations to lay a solid discipline foundation for agricultural education in South China and even China, and cultivated a number of agricultural research talents.
In 1936, Huang Yaoxiang entered Sun Yat-sen University to study in agronomic major and studied under Professor Ding Ying. Later, Huang Yaoxiang became a famous expert in rice genetic breeding and its application basic theoretical research in my country, and was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 1995. Huang Yaoxiang pioneered the practice of rice dwarf breeding in the field of rice dwarf breeding, and successively bred a series of high-yield varieties such as “plaza dwarf” and “pearl dwarf”, making a significant contribution to the increase in rice yield in southern China. From 1959 to 1999, Huang Yaoxiang presided over the large-scale promotion of cultivation.There are more than 60 varieties, with a cumulative planting area of more than 11.5 billion mu, increasing the output of society by 210 billion kilograms.
The famous rice geneticist Lu Yonggen studied with Ding Ying at South China Agricultural University in 1952. In the 1960s, he was the secretary and scientific research assistant of Ding Ying, then president of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Lu Yonggen has devoted his life to the research of genetic breeding of rice, and has achieved fruitful results. He divided the light temperature ecological type and climatic ecological type of Chinese rice varieties, proposed a new concept of “specific affinity gene”, and established the thick-line karyotype of three wild rice species native to China for the first time. In November 1993, Lu Yonggen was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Lu Yonggen has also been working at the forefront of higher agricultural education for a long time. He served as the president of South China Agricultural University and trained a large number of high-level modern agricultural experts, including a new generation of academicians, such as Liu Yaoguang. In his later years, Lu Yonggen donated more than 8.8 million yuan in his life to set up an education fund and donated his body to medical research and medical education. In 2019, after Lu Yonggen passed away, he was posthumously awarded the title of “Model of the Times” by the Central Propaganda Department.
In addition, Academician Pu Zhelong, Academician Zhao Shanhuan, Academician Pang Xiongfei, a famous insect ecologist, are also students of Ding Ying.