This article reviews the history and progress of hybrid rice development. Hybrid rice research was initiated back in 1964, and commercialized in 1976. Three-line and two-line system hybrid rice were developed in 1974 and 1995, respectively. Research on super hybrid rice, which was first launched by Ministry of Agriculture, China in 1996, is discussed, and the great progress of super hybrid rice had been achieved with a new yield record by 15.4 t ha^-1 in the 6.84 ha demonstration location in Xupu, Hunan Province, China in 2014. And the mechanism of heterosis, the techniques of hybrid seed production and the modern field managements in hybrid rice over the past decades are also discussed. Additionally, this article dealt with the intellectual property protection(IPR) and development of hybrid rice seed industry in China. Major factors that constrain hybrid rice development are analyzed and possible solutions to this problems are proposed. Finally, the authors present methods to further increase production yield, and propose an improvement for breeding super high-yielding hybrid rice based on these methods.
The stem morphology and anatomical structure of rice, as well as their relationship with lodging resistance, were studied with six super hybrid rice varieties as the tested materials. The results showed that the rice varieties with stronger lodging resistance were characterized by shorter basal elongated internodes and thicker stem base. The lodging index of hybrid rice was positively correlated with the lengths of the first, second and third basal elongated internodes (P〈0.01) and was negatively correlated with the thickness of basal stem wall and the number and area of small vascular bundles, the area of large vascular bundles and the total area of vascular bundles of the second basal elongated internode (P〈0.05). The correlations between lodging index and plant height, maximum culm diameter of stem base and minimum culm diameter of stem base were not significant. It indi- cates that the lodging resistance of super hybrid rice can be improved by shorten- ing the length of basal elongated internodes, thickening the wall of stem base and increasing the number and area of vascular bundles of basal elongated internodes.