🌾 New rice variety manages with half the water

• Scientists in Chile have developed a rice variety that only requires 12,000 cubic meters of water per hectare, compared to traditional 23,000 cubic meters per season.
• The new rice variety can be grown in both dry and flooded conditions, making it resistant to different weather conditions.
• The cultivation method reduces methane emissions from rice fields, which normally account for 10 percent of global methane emissions.

Scientists develop climate-resilient rice

In Ñiquén, 400 kilometers from Santiago in Chile, rice grows in dry soil. This is the result of a collaboration between researchers from the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the Chilean National Institute for Agricultural Research (INIA).

The new method has reduced water usage from 23,000 to 12,000 cubic meters per hectare per season. At INIA Quilamapu's experimental station in San Carlos de Ñuble, researchers are also studying how much methane emissions can be reduced by comparing traditional flood cultivation with new production systems without flooding.

Karla Cordero, who has led INIA's genetic rice improvement program since 2006, explains that out of nearly 300 tested genotypes, four have been selected for their ability to adapt to both drought and floods. The new variety is called aerobic rice, grown in well-drained soil that is neither flooded nor saturated.

Chilean rice production

Chile currently produces rice on only about 20 hectares in the Maule and Ñuble regions. The country imports the majority of its rice from Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay to meet national demand of 150,000 to 200,000 tons per year. Chilean crops are dominated by a genetic line called japonica, which is used for sushi and baby food and only accounts for 10-15 percent of world production.

The Chilean formula for adapting the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) to local soil and climate conditions has been tested in several countries. Similar low-emission system trials have been conducted in Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay, Panama, and Argentina.

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