Chinese scientists have developed a new salt-tolerant rice strains Known as “seawater rice”. It is grown in salty soil near the sea.
- The strains were created by over-expressing a gene from selected wild rice that’s more resistant to saline and alkali. Test fields in Tianjin—the municipality that encompasses Jinghai—recorded a yield of 4.6 metric tons per acre in 2021, higher than the national average for production of standard rice varieties.
- According to a report, China’s coastal waters have risen faster than the global average over the last 40 years. It is a a worrying trend given the country’s deep reliance on its long and low eastern coast for grain production.
- Chinese researchers believe that Seawater rice could help improve China’s grain production in the face of an extremely complicated situation regarding climate change and global food security.
- They are hoping that land once dismissed as barren can be turned into productive grain-producing plots.
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