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China plans to increase its annual grain production capacity to approximately 500 million tons by 2010, a key target for the drive of building a new socialist countryside, according to an official report on Monday.

"Efforts should be made to push China's overall grain output capacity to around 500 million tons through stabilizing and improving grain production, in a bid to realize basically self-supply and national food safety," read the Draft Guidelines for the 11th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development, which are being discussed at the annual full session of the Chinese parliament, the Tenth National People's Congress (NPC).

China's grain output reached 484.01 million tons in 2005, up 3.1 percent than the previous year, according to a latest report by the National Bureau of Statistics.

The 500-million-ton goal requires an annual output growth of at least 25 million tons of grain, or an annual increase of 1 percent in the per unit yield from the current 309.5 kg per mu (0.07 ha).

Priority should be given to the development of agricultural production, particularly the protection of arable land, acceleration of technological innovation and upgrading the agricultural structure, according to the draft national development blueprint for the period of 2006-2010.

China faces a great challenge in maintaining food supply safety given a growing population, shrinking cropland and scarce water resource, said Huang Peijin, an expert of rice breeding.

Huang, also a NPC deputy from the central province of Hunan attending the on-going legislative session, called for large-scale application of the technology of "super rice," or high-yield hybrid rice, in the rural areas, saying it is an important way of ensuring food supply for China's 1.3 billion population.

China launched a national project on super rice breeding in 2005, which is expected to cultivate some 20 high-yield rice strains in six years.

Yuan Longping, China's "father of super rice", said last December that as the first two phases of the project yielded 10.5 tons and 12 tons per hectare in pilot farms in 2000 and 2004, respectively, and the latest variety is well on track to produce up to 13.5 tons a hectare compared with an average of 6.5 tons per hectare for conventional seeds.

Yuan developed the world's first hybrid rice strain in 1974 and increased rice output by 15 to 20 percent.

A sound grain output is essential for the world's most populous country, which has became a grain importer. Whether China can maintain a stable grain output is crucial to its food safety, farmers' income, and the global grain demand-and-supply relationship, experts said.

Editor: Yan