WASHINGTON: A report in the journal Nature stated that Chinese scientists, in a ground-breaking demonstration, have grown a new variety of rice called SUSIBA2 that provides high yield and emits less methane.
Flooded rice fields are a known source of atmospheric methane, which is the second most important greenhouse gas responsible for about 20% of the global warming.
Increasing rice production since long has remained the primary objective of agricultural researchers, but no interest was paid on reducing the methane emission from paddy cultivation.
Researchers in the new effort to mitigate rice-associated methane emissions focused majorly on agricultural practices such as water management, fertilizer use, tillage and crop selection, which are labor intensive.
According to researchers, the new rice variety called SUSIBA2 fulfills two major goals – high yield and limiting amount of methane emission as compared to other conventional varieties.
The new rice variety has come after the collaborative work of scientists from the Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences and Hunan Agricultural University in China with researchers in the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington.
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