Chinese scientist questions record rice yield in India

Chinese revered agriculture scientist Yuan Longping Wednesday slammed a British news report about an Indian farmer who claimed his rice crop yielded an astonishing 22.4 tonnes per hectare.

In a village in India's poorest state Bihar, a farmer, Sumant Kumar, claimed the rice he grew with no genetic modification or herbicide last year has broken the world's record, a British newspaper The Observer reported on Saturday.

The report said the feat broke the previous record of 19.4 tonnes achieved by Yuan, who helped develop some of the first strains of hybrid rice.

Kumar achieved his extraordinary yield by adopting the system of rice intensification (SRI), as the report said.

Yuan questioned the verification of the record and the reasons given for achieving such a huge yield, in an interview with Hunan Economic TV station.

Yuan said the record was not credible because the crop was not verified by authorized experts before the paddy was harvested.　

"The record was verified by Indian authorities who we have to trust," the author of the Observer report told the Global Times Thursday.

The Observer report said the state's head of agriculture, a rice farmer, personally verified Kumar's crop.　

"The measurements were made by state government technicians and personnel quite correctly and with quite standard methods." Norman Uphoff, a professor of Cornell University who has long promoted SRI growing methods in India, said in an email to the Global Times.

There was no random sampling with small crop-cuttings that make errors more likely, Uphoff added.

The report also pointed out that the Bihar state agricultural universities didn't believe the result at first and had accused Kumar of cheating.

Yuan said the SRI method of growing rise has helped increase rice yields by 10 percent to 15 percent in low productive area, but didn't think SRI methods could produce the huge harvest claimed by the Indian farmer.