2013年4月6日，比尔·盖茨出席2013博鳌亚洲论坛“对话比尔·盖茨:为穷人投资”专题演讲，称赞中国在发展农业与减少饥饿方面做出的突出贡献。他提到，盖茨基金会正在与中国农业科学院、华大基因合作研发绿色超级稻，该稻产量极高。

比尔•盖茨称，他与夫人曾与绿色超级稻项目的主要科研人员见面，并了解如何开发新品种，高产却只需要较少的肥料和水。目前，该项目实验已获得一定进展，不过仍需要做很多的工作。

比尔•盖茨还称，中国创新的速度日新月异。华大基因就是中国创新的一个例子。华大基因是盖茨基金会的合作伙伴，这是一家总部位于深圳的生物技术研究机构。华大基因有着强大的生物信息分析能力及基因组研究能力。他们在人类健康及农业领域所作的工作有着非常重要的意义。有趣的是，他们培养了很多有才能的年轻人。这让我想起了当年创立微软的日子，有充沛的精力以及为解决科学问题的开创性思维。

视频链接：对话比尔盖茨 2013博鳌亚洲论坛（英文）

英文原文（节选）：

Every time I come to china I get to see the incredible rate of progress which is much faster than most of the other places. There are so many examples of great innovative works have been done here. One becoming a partner of our Foundation recently is BGI, the biotechnology institute headquartered in Shenzhen. They have some amazing bioinformatic and genomic capabilities and what they are doing would be very important whether to help understand human health or areas of agriculture. It’s very interesting how they’ve gone after very young people and talented people, reminds me of the early days of Microsoft - the great energy, the minds thinking in the new ways all committed to solve the top problems in science. Reminds me when I was young and people thought of computers in very different ways than they do today.

We were working with Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and BGI on super green rice. This rice has incredible productivity. My wife and I met Dr. Li, the leading researcher for this hybrid green super rice. He explained how we gone about developing these new varieties with the extra yield and less requirements for fertilizer and water. The pilot project on list looks very good but there are still quite a bit of work to do to make sure they get out.