Fifty years ago today, on September 12, 1975 (August 7, 1975 in the lunar calendar), Yu Qibao, an agronomist and cotton expert, passed away. Yu Qibao was born in a peasant family in Kunshan County, Jiangsu Province on June 14, 1910. He studied private school in his hometown when he was a child. At the age of 12, he was admitted to Shanghai Zhonghua Vocational School for Business Studies. In 1929, he was admitted to the High School Affiliated to Nantong Agricultural College. One year later, he was admitted to the Department of Agronomy, College of Agriculture, Central University. Published three papers: "New Varieties of Cotton in China","Genetic Research of Cotton in China" and "Preliminary Study on the Amount of Chlorophyll in Cotton". The latter two papers were also published and reprinted in British agricultural journals. After graduating from college in 1934, he stayed in school as a teaching assistant and engaged in research on cotton genetics and breeding. At the beginning of 1945, he went to the Department of Plant Breeding at Cornell University and the Department of Genetics at the Mayor's Neki Institute of New York for a one-year inspection. In 1949, he was transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture of North China. Later, he returned to the northwest and successively served as director of the Technical Research Office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of the Northwest Military and Political Commission, director of the Northwest Institute of Agricultural Sciences, and vice president of the Shaanxi Branch of China Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He passed away on September 12, 1975 due to gastric cancer.