(Yicai Global) Sept. 28 -- Yuan Longping, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and 'father of hybrid rice,' said his team has succeeded in removing the heavy metal cadmium from rice, Hunan Daily reported Sept. 25.

"We've achieved a breakthrough in rice breeding technology. We can now strip parents of cadmium-containing and cadmium-attracting genes. Once the parents are clean, the seeds will be clean," the report quoted Yuan as saying at the 2017 National Exhibition of New Rice Varieties and Technologies.

Crop purity has attracted growing attention as supply-side structural reform of agriculture has imposed new requirements for green seeding in recent years. Producers must think about how to prevent intergenerational transmission of pollutants in their crops in areas with heavily polluted soil. This cadmium-stripping technology will help check the tendency of some Chinese crops to absorb high levels of heavy metals.