Japan discovers new drought-resistant rice variety

According to the August 4 issue of Nature Genetics, a group of Japanese biologists has bred a new rice variety with deep roots that can maintain high yields even in drought conditions.

A team of experts from the National Institute of Agrobiology (NIAS) in Tsubaka said they have found a special gene in a rice variety grown in the dry highlands of the Philippines.

Illustration photo. (Source: ctysdag.com)

This rice variety, called Kinandang Patong, has deep roots that grow straight down, reaching deep into dry soil towards water, in contrast to the shallow, slanting root system of typical rice varieties grown in flooded fields.

The gene from this deep-rooted rice variety DR01 was inserted into the rice variety IR64, which is very popular in the Asian region. The new rice variety was then grown in rice fields under three different conditions: non-drought land, moderately drought land and severely drought land.

Normally, under moderate drought conditions, the yield of IR64 is reduced to only 42% compared to non-drought conditions. But with IR64 rice combined with the DR01 gene, the yield is almost unaffected.

Under severe drought conditions, IR64 yield was almost completely lost, while under severe drought conditions, the yield of the new rice variety was only reduced by about 30%.

The United Nations estimates the world population will reach 9.6 billion by mid-21st century and 10.9 billion by 2100, up from 7.2 billion today.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), to provide enough food for humanity in the context of increasingly severe floods and droughts, there needs to be a comprehensive campaign against food waste, rational use of land, water, fertilizers, and pesticides, as well as promoting new inventions in the agricultural sector to create high-yield rice varieties that can withstand harsh weather conditions./.

According to (TTXVN) - VT