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Rice is one of the globe’s
most important food
staples. About half of
the world’s seven billion
people eat rice every day.
Unfortunately, about 50 million
acres of rice is grown in floodprone
regions of the world, and
rice plants die if they’re completely
submerged for more than
three days.
But that’s changing, thanks to
the work of two plant scientists
from the UC Davis College of
Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences. Professor Pamela
Ronald with the Department of
Plant Pathology and the Agricultural
Experiment Station, and
David Mackill, adjunct professor
with the Department of Plant Sciences,
have helped develop a submergence-
tolerant variety of rice that is producing yields up to five
times greater than conventional varieties, improving life for rice
growers around the world.
To honor their efforts, Ronald, Mackill and Kenong Xu, former
postdoctoral fellow who is now an assistant professor of horticultural
sciences at Cornell University, have been named laureates of The
Tech Awards 2012 by The Tech Museum in San Jose, Calif., for
using technology to benefit humanity and spark global change.
“It’s a wonderful honor,” says Mackill. “It’s very rewarding to
know our work is making a difference.”
Submergence-Tolerant Rice Variety
Ronald, Mackill and Xu teamed up to identify a gene that enables
rice to survive flooding and introduced that gene into a high-yielding
rice variety. The result was a submergence-tolerant variety known as
“Sub 1 rice,” which one million farmers planted in 2011, producing
yields two to five times greater than conventional varieties.
The submergence-tolerant rice has the same taste, feel and harvest
schedule as traditional rice. That’s one reason farmers – who
themselves did extensive field tests of the rice in India and Bangladesh
– are now using it.
Flooding is not much of an issue for rice farmers in California,
but it is a concern for growers in the Southern United States, who are
showing interest in the new variety. In the meantime, “Sub 1 rice” is
saving lives in poor, flood-prone parts of the world.
“It’s estimated that two billion very poor farmers live in these
flood-prone areas in Asia, and 75
million live on less than a dollar a
day,” Ronald says. “So even a
small change in the quantity of
grain that can be harvested can
have a huge impact on their families’
lives. I talked with several
women in South Asia who told me
the new variety is providing
enough yield to feed their families
and provide extra rice to sell.”
Ronald is now working on identifying
other genes that confer to
tolerance to stress or resistance to
disease – major causes of crop loss
worldwide. Mackill worked at the
International Rice Research Institute
in the Philippines where the
new rice varieties were developed.
Now based at UC Davis, Mackill is
helping rice farmers throughout
California, the nation and the world
sustainably produce rice with good yields and great taste.
The University of California, Davis, contributed information for
this article. |
