THE next recruits in the war against global warming could be rice plants.
About 10 to 15 per cent of all emissions of the greenhouse gas methane come from rice paddies, and most of this originates from the plants themselves.
But when a team led by Heinz Rennenberg of the Fraunhofer Institute for Atmospheric Environmental Research in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, measured the methane production from 22 modern, high-yielding rice strains, they found an eightfold difference in those emissions from strain to strain (Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, vol 91, p 59). This gives breeders plenty of leeway to modify the trait through…
