Super rice breed produces bumper harvest

A super rice breed called Yongyou 12 has produced a bumper harvest of 14.38 metric tons a hectare at a 8.5-hectare demonstration base in Ningbo, Zhejiang province.

To ensure the accuracy of the yield, a team of agricultural experts supervised the harvest on Nov 27, randomly selecting four plots of the planting field.

"We have checked the whole planting field to examine whether other rice strains have been planted to affect rice output," Zhang Xiufu, an agricultural expert with the Ministry of Agriculture, was quoted as saying by State broadcaster China Central Television.

Rice is the staple food for more than 50 percent of the world's population and about 60 percent of China's 1.3 billion people.

So far, China has approved 96 varieties of new super rice strains, with planting areas of 7.4 million hectares, or nearly a quarter of the country's rice fields, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The ministry also aims to develop more than 30 new super rice strains by 2015.