New Variety of Rice Fights Global Warming and Global Hunger

Climate Change, Anthropocene, & Associated Issues

Date posted: 11/30/15

Dr. Conca reports that a slight change in a single gene of rice can avoid the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions each year as all the wind turbines in the world, the same as 15 nuclear power plants. Work led by Dr. Christer Jansson at the Department of Energy Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that transferring one gene from barley to rice lowered the methane (CH4 or natural gas) emissions from rice paddies to almost zero. As the COP21 climate change talks get underway today in Paris, it is nice to see real progress on a critical front that does not get enough attention ... food and climate. Agriculture is a primary source of greenhouse gas emissions, especially as humans practice it nowadays, and emissions are on the rise. Over the last ten years, agriculture, forestry and other land uses have emitted over 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent/year - - 5 billion tons of CO2 eq per yr from crop and livestock production - 4 billion tons CO2 eq per yr because of net forest conversion to other lands (deforestation) - 1 billion tons CO2 eq per yr from degraded peatlands - 0.2 billion tons CO2 eq per yr from biomass fires In contrast, only about two billion tons CO2 eq per yr are removed from the atmosphere by carbon sequestration in forests and wildlands. However, much of this CO2 equivalent is actually from methane, whether from the back-end of cows or from rice paddies. Methane is second only to CO2 as a greenhouse gas, being responsible for about 20% of the global warming effects since pre-industrial times. Atmospheric methane is about 20 times more effective than CO2 at trapping heat, but has a much shorter half-life in the atmosphere than CO2 (about 8 years for methane versus between 30 and 300 for CO2, depending upon decay path). Rice paddies are the largest anthropogenic methane source and produce over 10% of atmospheric methane. Their warm soggy and nutrient rich soil provides ideal conditions for methanogenesis.