Good morning.

Welcome to Global Rights Frontiers. This Asian grain is from China's Shang Shan culture over 10,000 years old. It embodies humanity's first struggle against hunger. Now its legacy, hybrid rice, continues its journey worldwide, including in Africa. Today we are honored to have He Yuan Cheng, Chinese hybrid rice African technical instructor, and Tufu Hisoya, a local farmer from Madagascar with us.

Welcome. Thank you. something special could you show it to us of course this is the back for my first harvest chinese hybrid rice years ago to us it represents hope and honored professor yuan longping who made it all possible professor yuan is my mentor it is his scientific legacy and his vision of a world without hunger that guides our work in africa and beyond yes we are forever grateful united Professor Yuan taught our students, including my son, in person. So his legacy is growing in our fields and communities.

Marvelous. Salute to Professor Yuan. So, Tu-fu, when did you first learn about hybrid rice? I remember I started in 2007 with the Chinese team hybrid rice demonstration center. We have good land but low yield until they showed us a better way. This was part of China's broader commitment to Africa. At the 2006 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, China pledged to establish 10 agricultural technology demonstration centers in Africa.

Madagascar was chosen first for its potential. Why Madagascar? Prof. Yuan saw it as an agricultural hub connecting Asia and Africa. He said a single seed zone here can ripple across the entire Indian Ocean. Did you directly promote mature hybrid rice seeds in Madagascar? No. Well, exactly. It's necessary to first breed adaptive seeds to go there, plant, and test grow.

Professor Yuan and a team eventually developed five locally adapted varieties with high yields, drought tolerance, and flood resistance. And a big company, Indian Ocean Trade, has selling these seeds everywhere. Our government also partnered with Yuan's Hightech Seeds to make the seed for Malagasy, and now the seeds love our soil. Chinese institutions focus on breeding breakthrough varieties and partner with local African companies for production and distribution.

How did this foreign seed come to be accepted and to love Malagasca soil? What was the biggest hurdle? Maybe it's philosophy. Yes, philosophy. They believe in their ancestors' wisdom while we believe in our data, and we have proved benefits through side-by-side demonstrations, local rice versus hybrid, and we have earned their trust, not asked for it.

Actually the village elders warned that the farm rice lacks an ancestor spirit, and eventually the yield has convinced them, and we have also kept our traditional rice field. Still, seed cost was a huge burden for farmers at first. Yes but luckily the productive input fund provided the seeds and fertilizers for the first season and after that we repaid a portion of our profits to the fund supporting more farmers in the next season Like a self-sustaining cycle.

Exactly. And now, hybridizing Madagascar is like an investment in our future as a national policy. It is called Zahrabi, meaning the best thing. Wow. Wait a minute. It's even printed on our 20,000-year-old banknote. Look at this. Yeah, print it here. That's great to see the recognition. What did the localizing hybrid rice seeds from Madagascar actually entail?

It's more than just planting a different seed, isn't it? Absolutely. True technical localization is a process of iterative adaptation. Yes, our deep-water rice has its own wisdom. It can survive loss, but it struggles with the past and the drought, especially a frog species. Yeah, we've learned from Malagasy varieties. The deep water genes were key to our first local hybrid. And for the frog issue, we introduced ducks.

For the water problems, we promoted elastic mulching with strip irrigation and contour region to conserve moisture. Yes, in fact, the local think tank has reported that the hybridized expansion might pressure wetland. After that, the Chinese team and the think tank has co-designed the dark and rice system, turning risk into an eco-agricultural model. So technical localization isn't simple to transfer, but to diagnose innovative and create a new bespoke agricultural system that functions within the local ecological boundaries.

Exactly. How did both sides overcome the initially deep cultural distrust? The Chinese team showed us through absolute patience and demonstration. you you

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you you This bidirectional exchange embodies the essence of interculturality, enriching rather than

erasing local culture, and it has yielded hybrid outcome, sustainably integrated and widely accepted. Thus, hybrid rice in Madagascar is a symbol of life that is more than a crop success. It represents the formation of a shared culture and rooted in mutual respect, ultimately leading to food sovereignty and socio-economic resilience. Thank you. Thank you.