China’s answer to rising sea levels, food insecurity: ‘seawater rice’

What is the News?

Chinese Scientists have developed a variety of rice known as “Seawater Rice”.

What is Seawater Rice?

Seawater Rice is new salt-tolerant rice that can be grown in salty soil near the sea.

This rice was created by over-expressing a gene from selected wild rice that’s more resistant to saline and alkali.

What is the significance of Seawater Rice?

In China, 100 million hectares of land in the country, about the size of Egypt, is high in saline and alkaline.

To make use of this salty soil, farmers in China traditionally dilute their fields with large amounts of freshwater. But this method requires vast amounts of water and often doesn’t improve yields enough.

Hence, the development of “Seawater Rice” could help China withstand soil saltiness and also ensure food security that’s been threatened by rising sea levels, increasing grain demand and supply chain disruptions.

Note: According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sea levels around the world could rise as much as 59 centimetres by the end of the century if the planet warms by 2 degrees Celsius. 

Source: This post is based on the article “China’s answer to rising sea levels, food insecurity: ‘seawater rice’” published in Business Standard on 21st February 2022.