浙江台州仙居县文元横溪中学 江 丽

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难词探意

1. arable /'ærəbl/ adj. 耕作的；可耕的

2. famine /'fæmɪn/ n. 饥荒

3. robust /rəʊ'bʌst/ adj. 强劲的

4. yield /jiːld/ n. 产量；产出

Yuan Longping, born in September 1930, has helped China work a great wonder—feeding nearly one-fifth of the world's population with less than 9 percent of the world's totalarableland.

Getting enough to eat, however, used to be a serious problem in China. “I saw heartbreaking scenes of people starving to death on the road before 1949,” recalled Yuan. It was that year when Yuan applied for Southwest Agricultural College and began his special connection with rice—a staple food of the Chinese people that would become the focus of his lifelong research career. Having helped China break away from starvation,Yuan, thefaminefighter, had a much bigger ambition—to save the world from starvation.

Since the 1980s, Yuan's team has offered training courses in dozens of countries in Africa, the Americas and Asia—providing arobustfood source in areas with a high risk of famine. With assistance from Yuan's team, a hybrid crop variety produced a harvest of 10.8 tonnes per hectare in Madagascar in 2019, far exceeding theyieldof local rice. And the average yield of the hybrid rice planted in Kenya was four to five times greater than conventional varieties.

Yuan's team has continued to make new breakthroughs. Yuan's team was invited to make a trial planting of the saline-alkaline tolerant rice （耐盐碱水稻） in experimental fields in Dubai in January 2018, achieving huge success. China's export of saline-alkaline tolerant rice and the technique has been eyed as a way to combat the world's food insecurity. Now the focus of Yuan's hybrid rice project has changed from output increase to green and sustainable development. In September 2017, a strain of low-cadmium （低镉） indica rice developed by Yuan's team and the Hunan provincial academy of agricultural sciences was able to reduce the average amount of cadmium in rice by more than 90 percent in areas suffering from heavy metal pollution.

“This is a huge breakthrough, and the technology is simple and inexpensive to apply,” said Yuan.He is currently working on the third generation of hybrid rice, and striving to gradually replace the three-line and two-line hybrid rice in the next few years. “I'm confident in the future of my country,and I want to make more contributions to its prosperity.”

Reading

Check

1. When did Yuan begin his research on rice?

A. In 1930. B. In 1949.

C. In 1980. D. In 2017.

2. What does Yuan's hybrid rice project focus on now?

A. Output increase.

B. Reducing metal pollution.

C. Looking for more arable land.

D. Sustainable development of rice.

3. What is Yuan working on now according to the text?

A. Developing the two-line hybrid rice.

B. Offering training courses in Africa.

C. Studying the third generation of hybrid rice.

D. Experimenting on the saline-alkaline tolerant rice.

4. What is the purpose of writing the text?

A. To explain planting technology.

B. To recommend a new type of rice.

C. To show the development of a country.

D. To introduce a pioneer who developed hybrid rice.