Rice revolution? New rice could help feed world, fight climate change. - CSMonitor.com

The work began several years ago with a group of researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, says Christer Jansson, who headed the effort at the time. The scientists were trying to understand the genetic machinery that controls how carbon – in the form of sugars, starches, and other carbohydrates – is distributed in plants as they take up as carbon dioxide via photosynthesis.

The team found three types of genes that act like master switches controlling the distribution of carbon in barley. The researchers homed in on one in particular, which they labelled SUSIBA2, explains Dr. Jansson, currently director of plant sciences at the US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Other researchers noticed that rice plants that have the largest number of grains produce the least amount of methane. The reason: More carbon going into rice grains left less carbon to go elsewhere – like to the roots, which ultimately feed microbes that produce methane.

In modeling how the gene SUSIBA2 worked in barley "we realized it would be possible to control carbon allocation in rice,"  Jansson says, creating "a win-win situation. We would get more starch, more food, and less methane."

Tests and field trials in China found that the SUSBIA2 gene indeed channeled carbon mainly to the rice plants' stems and grains, according to the new study's team, headed by Chuanxin Sun at the Institute for Biotechnology at the Fujian Academy of Agricultural Science in Fuzhou, China.

This redirection of carbon reduced the amount of carbon available to methane-forming microbes in the roots and adjacent soil, reducing the number of microbes and hence methane emissions.

Rice revolution? New rice could help feed world, fight climate change. - CSMonitor.com