HARDY Rice: Less Water, More Food

Terra Daily: An international team of scientists has produced a new type of rice that grows better and uses water more efficiently than other rice crops. Professor Andy Pereira at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) has been working with colleagues in India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Mexico and The Netherlands to identify, characterize and make use of a gene known as HARDY that improves key features of this important grain crop.

The research, which was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that HARDY contributes to more efficient water use in rice, a primary source of food for more than half of the world's population.

Rice (Oryza sativa) is a water guzzler when compared to other crops. It typically uses up to three times more water than other food crops such as maize or wheat and consumes around 30 percent of the fresh water used for crops worldwide. In conditions where water is scarce, it is important to have crops that can efficiently generate biomass (plant tissue) using limited amounts of water. HARDY rice shows a significant increase in biomass under both drought and non-drought conditions. The researchers found that the biomass of HARDY rice increased by around 50 percent under conditions of water deprivation (drought) compared to the unmodified version of the same type of rice….