Chinese scientists have developed a salt-tolerant rice variety that can be cultivated near the sea, aiming to ensure food security in the face of numerous challenges posed by climate change.
Recently, Chinese media have reported extensively on the harvest of a salt-tolerant rice variety along the northeastern coastal areas of the country. The story of this miraculous rice variety has also garnered significant attention from Western media.
The “Sea Rice” Fields
Jinghai District in Tianjin, northern China, is an area that is largely unsuitable for rice cultivation.
Located along the Bohai Sea, more than half of the land here is saline and alkaline, making it difficult for crops to thrive. However, last autumn, Jinghai successfully planted and harvested 100 hectares of rice.
Residents harvesting ‘sea rice’ at a cultivation facility in Jinghai District, Tianjin (China) in November 2021 – (Photo: ECNS).
The secret behind this bountiful harvest lies in the new salt-tolerant rice variety developed by the late Yuan Longping and his research team.
This rice variety was created with the hope of ensuring food security threatened by rising sea levels, increasing food demand, and disrupted supply chains.
The new rice variety is called “sea rice” (technical name: “salt-alkali tolerant rice”) because it is grown in saline soil near the sea. The rice is derived from the genes of a wild rice variety that has been selectively bred for its excellent salt and alkali resistance.
The harvest marks an initial success in the experimental planting phase of the “sea rice” project. The experimental fields in Tianjin achieved a yield of over 11 tons per hectare last year, surpassing the national average for standard rice varieties.
This breakthrough comes as China seeks to secure its domestic food and energy supply amidst the impacts of climate change. The country is home to one-fifth of the world’s population but occupies only about 10% of the world’s arable land.
Coastal waters in China have been rising faster than the global average over the past 40 years. This trend is concerning for China as it primarily cultivates rice in the eastern coastal areas, which have long and low topography.
Successfully cultivating salt-tolerant rice on a large scale will help them make use of the increasing areas of saline-affected land.
The “Chip” of Agriculture
Conventional rice varieties cannot thrive in fields with a salt content greater than 0.3%. Typically, to utilize saline land, farmers must leach the salt. However, this method, still practiced in some areas, consumes a lot of freshwater and often does not improve yields.
However, “sea rice” can grow in environments with salt content exceeding 0.3%. Chen Yangfa, the CEO of an agricultural company in Tianjin, stated that there are over 13,300 square kilometers of saline and alkaline land within and around Tianjin, particularly in areas near the Bohai Sea.
Wan Jiali, a manager at the Qingdao Salt-Alkali Tolerant Rice Research and Development Center, compared: “Seeds are the ‘chip’ of agriculture.”
According to Wan, “sea rice” could help improve China’s rice production in a “highly complex situation related to climate change and global food security.”
China has been researching salt-tolerant rice since at least the 1950s. However, the term “sea rice” has only gained attention in recent years after Yuan Longping, a leading agricultural scientist in China, began his research on it in 2012.
Yuan is regarded as the “father of hybrid rice” and made significant contributions to saving millions from starvation through his research on high-yield hybrid rice varieties in the 1970s.
In 2016, he selected six locations across China with differing soil conditions to experiment with salt-tolerant rice.
A year later, China established a research center in Qingdao with the goal of harvesting 30 million tons of rice from 6.7 million hectares of barren land. “Agricultural researchers like us should bear the responsibility of ensuring food security” – Yuan told the media in 2018.
According to Bloomberg, a researcher at the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture stated that “sea rice” is currently mainly grown in experimental fields, and he believes that commercial cultivation will soon succeed in China with government support.
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“Sea Rice”: The Future of Food Security? According to CGTN, if China cultivates “sea rice” on 1/10 of its saline and alkaline land, it could increase the national rice production by nearly 20% – enough to feed 200 million people. Globally, there are 1 billion hectares of land that have been affected by salinity, with an additional 10 million hectares each year. CGTN remarked: “If sea rice can truly transform these areas into fertile land, it will not only ensure national food security in China but also contribute to a long-term future free from hunger worldwide.” |
