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Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Co (Mahyco), an agri-biotech company from India, and Arcadia Biosciences Inc, a Nasdaq-listed agricultural technology company, on Tuesday announced good progress in developing salinity- tolerant rice.
In two years of initial field trials, rice varieties with Arcadia’s salinity-tolerance trait showed double-digit increase under saline conditions, with no loss of yield under normal conditions, said the company in a statement.
Mahyco will advance these lead ST rice lines into their trait introgression programme, and conduct further multi-location field trials to validate trait performance, it added.
Arcadia’s salinity tolerance trait enables plants to produce increased yields under conditions of high salinity, expanding the range of usable acreage for crop production and reducing requirements for fresh water. The trait is in Phase 3 of development, and the trait has been applied to a wide range of crops, including wheat, rice, cotton, sugarcane and vegetables.
Globally, loss of crop yield to salt-induced land degradation is estimated at $27.3 billion a year, according to the United Nations Natural Resources Forum. Of the world’s 568 million acres of irrigated land, 111 million acres are estimated to be salt-affected.
Rice is the world’s most valuable crop, grown on over 405 million acres globally with a harvest value of $328 billion in 2013, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Salinity stress occurs globally where irrigation is prevalent, where ground water supplies are salinised due to seawater intrusion and mineral deposits. Such areas are common in India, China, North America, Australia and other regions of Asia.
Usha Barwale Zehr, Chief Technology Officer of Mahyco, said with the conclusion of the salinity tolerant rice trials, the company is able to identify lines which have shown superior performance in acute salt stress conditions, and going forward will incorporate these lines into elite materials, to bring commercial benefits for rice growers.
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