Rice fields are a major source of methane emissions
TickakantsTraday / Oli Glots
A new variety of rice created by simple cross could reduce the emissions of the harvest of methaneA powerful greenhouse gas, nearly three -quarters.
Rice cultivation is responsible for around 12% of the anthropogenic methane release, a gas that has a warming effect 25 times stronger than that of carbon dioxide.
The emissions come from soil microbes in flooded rice fields where rice is cultivated. These organizations break chemicals known as the root exudates released by plants, producing nutrients that plants can use, but also the manufacture of methane in the process.
To learn more about the factors affecting methane production from rice roots, Anna Schnurer At the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and its colleagues cultivated two strains of rice in a laboratory: a Japanese cultivar called Nipponbaric with medium methane emissions and a genetically modified strain with low methane emissions called SSIBA2.
Susiba2 has produced less fumarate, an exudat root known to be a key engine of methane emissions than Nipponbarus. But when the two strains were treated with Oxantel, a chemical that inhibits the degradation of the fumarate by bacteria, the Susiba2 strain still produced less methane. This meant that there must be another factor causing the difference between the varieties.
It turned out that Susiba2 culture secured high levels of ethanol, which also seemed to suppress methane emissions.
The team then turned to traditional reproduction techniques to produce a new rice tension by crossing an high -efficiency elite variety with the cultivar Heijing, a strain that produces a low fummarate and high ethanol.
More than two years of field trials in China, the new strain has produced harvest yields of more than 8 tonnes per hectare, compared to the world average of just over 4 tonnes, and it emitted 70% methane less than the elite variety to which it was high.
Johannes Le Coutre At the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, said that the study is an example of well executed research on the culprits behind the greenhouse gas emissions of the harvest.
“The central point of the study is that they do not use gene engineering technologies or transgenic modifications or approaches,” explains the Coure. “They use the traditional cross to create new rice lines which lower the synthesis of methane.”
