23 August 2015

A major challenge for agricultural research in the mid-term: developping climate-change ready rice varieties

Rice is the world’s most important grain. It provides around one half of all the energy intake of humankind and is a source of living for tens of millions of famers throughout the inter-tropical world, particularly in Asia and Africa. But paddy fields, from which rice is harvested, are also major consumers of water. Rice also generates a considerable volume of greenhouse gasses, mainly methane, and this volume is expected to grow as the temperature and CO2 concentration in the air incease. Rice is rather sensitive to the presence of salt in the soil, and large ricefield areas in Asia, particularly in Bangladesh but also in Thailand and other countries, are more and more threatened by seawater intrusions, making them less and less suitable for rice production, if tolerant varieties are not developed.

It is in this unfavourable context, that the distribution to about 180,000 farmers from Bangladesh, since 2011, of a salt-tolerent variety of rice is highly welcome. This variety was developed by scientists of the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute with the support of three non-profit organisations: the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), the World Fish Center (WorldFish) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). The variety was obtained by crossbreeding existing rice varieties that are naturally resistant to salty soil. Its development did not involve any genetical engineering.

This is just one example of a result obtained through agricultural research for rice. The Philippines-based IRRI runs a major programme aiming at developping new varieties that can cope better with climate change. For this, IRRI uses the International Rice Genebank - the most comprehensive collection of rice genetic diversity in the world with around 110,000 different types of rice - as a source of rice genes associated with traits that can be combined through crossbreading.

On its website, IRRI claims that it is making good progress in developping "C4" rice - rice with a supercharged photosynthesis mechanism that is much better at using sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into grain. According to IRRI, C4 rice could yield up to 50% more grain than currently possible from existing varieties and would be vastly more water- and nutrient-efficient. This reduced consumption of water and nutrients, along with management practices that are being tested by IRRI could also reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Another area where research is being conducted is to seek ways of reducing the energy requirement for cooking rice. If the hopes generated in IRRI by the discovery of a gene that affects gelatinization temperature are confirmed, cooking time of rice could be reduced by as much as 4 minutes, resulting in massive energy savings and reduced emissions of greenhouse gases.

This text illustrates the need to invest more resources into public non-profit agricultural research that could generate technologies accessible to all farmers. [read]

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To know more:

1. -Amy Yee, Climate Change-Ready Rice Keeps Farmers' Fields Fertile, 2015 http://amyyeewrites.com
   

2. -IRRI website, Rice and Climate Change
   

Earlier articles on hungerexplained.org related to the topic:

1. -Research and biodiversity can help us reduce the negative impact of climate change: the case of beans, 2015
   

2. -Biodiversity or GMOs : how to increase plant resistance against drought?, 2014
   

3. -Developing drought resistance or investing in water management?, 2014
   

4. -Development of research, 2013
   

Last update:    August 2015

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