Yuan Longping, China's renowned rice scientist, is leading a research to cultivate new strains of high yield "sea rice."

The research team plans to spend three years developing a breed that can withstand water with a salinity of up to 0.8 percent, with a yield over 300 kilograms per mu (a Chinese unit equivalent to 666 square meters), said Yuan, known as the "father of hybrid rice," during a seminar in Sanya city in the southern Hainan Province.