Rice grows best in flooded paddy fields. Too much water, however, and modern high-yield varieties drown within a few days. The downside of having bumper crops in good years is that the crops are vulnerable to the kind of floods that regularly trouble south and south-east Asia. More than $1 billion of rice is lost this way every year.
Now researchers have tracked down a gene in an old variety of rice largely abandoned by farmers that allows the plant to survive complete submersion. They say it could be the first lost gene of a series to be introduced into…
