Breeding is an arduous process, heavily affected by sunlight and temperature, and Zhou always tends his crops with round-the-clock care. "We have to carefully protect them from being drowned in the water, or being eaten by birds and rats, just like caring for a newborn baby," Zhou says.

It is not always plain sailing, though. As Zhou has admitted, sometimes scientific research requires luck.

"In the past, some researchers might not be able to breed a new variety despite a lifetime of trying," adds Zhou, explaining that agriculture has always been sensitive to climate change throughout history. In August, southern China suffered from extremely high temperatures, which had a serious impact on the crops in Zhou's experimental field — some of them even withered. Zhou, though, never got downhearted. Seeing things from a different perspective, Zhou believed it opened a window for him to do further study. "Sometimes we just need that sudden high temperature to give us the proper conditions, which help us select the rice," he notes.

The hard work eventually paid off. After going through tens of thousands of crossbreeding combinations, Zhou and his team have successfully created a number of variants to meet the demands of the population. Besides making a breakthrough in crop yields and rice quality, Zhou has also developed a kind of "functional rice" — low-glycemic rice — for those living with diabetes. "It has some starch that can't be degraded. Therefore, the starch won't turn into sugar even if we feel full," Zhou explains.