Japanese scientists develop drought-resistant rice strain

Japanese biotechnologists announced they had developed a rice plant with deeper roots that can sustain high yields in droughts that wipe out conventional rice crops.

It is another significant breakthrough in this field in the light of attempts to feed the world’s growing population at a time of worsening climate change, France Presse has reported.

A team of scientists from the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences in Tsukuba describe how they found a remarkable gene in a rice plant cultivated in the dry uplands of the Philippines. The main characteristics of this rice strain called Kinandang Patong are deep roots that grow straight downwards, searching for water, as opposed to root systems that are shallow and grow out sideways in typical water-rich paddy fields.

The gene dubbed DRO1 was spliced into a cultivar called IR64. The team then put the new plant through its paces, planting it and standard IR64 in upland fields in three kinds of conditions — no drought, moderate drought and severe drought.

Moderate drought reduced yield from IR64 to just 42 percent of no-drought conditions. Severe drought destroyed it totally. However, IR64 with the DRO1 gene was almost unaffected by moderate drought. In severe drought, yield fell by around 30 percent.

According to UN estimates, the world’s population is expected to reach 9.6 billion by mid-century, from 7.2 billion today. By 2100, the figure could be 10.9 billion.