Born in Peking, Yuan Longping graduated from Southwest Agricultural College in China in 1953, and then was assigned to teach crop genetics and breeding at an agricultural school in Hunan Province. He began his research in hybrid rice development in 1964 and subsequently was transferred to the Hunan Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1971 to serve as a research professor. It was there, two years later, that he achieved a major scientific breakthrough as he successfully developed the genetic materials essential for breeding high-yielding hybrid rice varieties.