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Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumTiny grains of rice hold big promise for greenhouse gas reductions, bioenergy
http://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=4214[font face=Serif][font size=5]Tiny grains of rice hold big promise for greenhouse gas reductions, bioenergy[/font]
[font size=4]Discovery delivers high starch content, virtually no methane emissions[/font]
July 28, 2015
[font size=3]RICHLAND, Wash. Rice serves as the staple food for more than half of the world's population, but it's also the one of the largest manmade sources of atmospheric methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Now, with the addition of a single gene, rice can be cultivated to emit virtually no methane from its paddies during growth. It also packs much more of the plant's desired properties, such as starch for a richer food source and biomass for energy production, according to a study in Nature.
With their warm, waterlogged soils, rice paddies contribute up to 17 percent of global methane emissions, the equivalent of about 100 million tons each year. While this represents a much smaller percentage of overall greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide, methane is about 20 times more effective at trapping heat. SUSIBA2 rice, as the new strain is dubbed, is the first high-starch, low-methane rice that could offer a significant and sustainable solution.
Researchers created SUSIBA2 rice by introducing a single gene from barley into common rice, resulting in a plant that can better feed its grains, stems and leaves while starving off methane-producing microbes in the soil.
The results, which appear in the July 30 print edition of Nature and online, represent a culmination of more than a decade of work by researchers in three countries, including Christer Jansson, director of plant sciences at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and EMSL, DOE's Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory. Jansson and colleagues hypothesized the concept while at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and carried out ongoing studies at the university and with colleagues at China's Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences and Hunan Agricultural University.
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[font size=4]Discovery delivers high starch content, virtually no methane emissions[/font]
July 28, 2015
[font size=3]RICHLAND, Wash. Rice serves as the staple food for more than half of the world's population, but it's also the one of the largest manmade sources of atmospheric methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Now, with the addition of a single gene, rice can be cultivated to emit virtually no methane from its paddies during growth. It also packs much more of the plant's desired properties, such as starch for a richer food source and biomass for energy production, according to a study in Nature.
With their warm, waterlogged soils, rice paddies contribute up to 17 percent of global methane emissions, the equivalent of about 100 million tons each year. While this represents a much smaller percentage of overall greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide, methane is about 20 times more effective at trapping heat. SUSIBA2 rice, as the new strain is dubbed, is the first high-starch, low-methane rice that could offer a significant and sustainable solution.
Researchers created SUSIBA2 rice by introducing a single gene from barley into common rice, resulting in a plant that can better feed its grains, stems and leaves while starving off methane-producing microbes in the soil.
The results, which appear in the July 30 print edition of Nature and online, represent a culmination of more than a decade of work by researchers in three countries, including Christer Jansson, director of plant sciences at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and EMSL, DOE's Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory. Jansson and colleagues hypothesized the concept while at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and carried out ongoing studies at the university and with colleagues at China's Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences and Hunan Agricultural University.
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Tiny grains of rice hold big promise for greenhouse gas reductions, bioenergy (Original Post)
OKIsItJustMe
Jul 2015
OP
OnlinePoker
(5,722 posts)1. Okay, anti-GMO crowd, tell us why this is bad. n/t
Nihil
(13,508 posts)3. You asked and the Great Gazoo answered ...
... in .2
So, pro-GMO crowd, apart from boosting the GMO-producer's profits, tell us why this is good.
GreatGazoo
(3,937 posts)2. 2009 study and practice changes -- field flooding caused the methane, not the genetics of the rice
The team found that draining paddy fields in the middle of the rice-growing season a practice that most Chinese farmers have adopted since the 1980s because it increases rice yields and saves water stopped most of the methane release from the field. The team presented their results on 13 August (2009) at a meeting on climate science convened at a Beijing hotel by the US Department of Energy and China's Ministry of Science and Technology.
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090818/full/news.2009.833.html
The good news is that the real solution has been deployed (in China for about 30 years, and) beyond China for 5 years now!