By Patrick Barta
As development and climate change imperil rice yields, scientists seek
new Green Revolution
"Even the most resourceful housewife cannot create miracles from a
pantry that lacks rice."

--Chinese proverb

Famine was still a scourge a generation ago when farmers in this dusty
region received the first seed packets of a new strain of rice designed to
grow hardier plants, and feed more people, than ever before.

The rice, known as IR8 by the scientists who developed it, brought the
Green Revolution here to India's Punjab region. In the 1960s, local farmers
were on the front lines of a movement that affected billions of people
around the world who depend on rice as their staple food. The new varieties
of rice, developed by a small laboratory in the Philippines, spurred an
agricultural boom that transformed lives and nations.

It's a boom that now is at risk of going bust.

Rice yields are flat-lining. Overproduction has exhausted the soil
that once supported the larger crops. Water shortages abound. And the price
of the world's most eaten food is rising steeply, up about 70% since 2001,
according to U.S. agencies.

Now, huge populations that subsist on rice, in mostly poor stretches
of the globe, are suffering the deleterious effects.

In China, where higher food costs have contributed to a troubling rise
in inflation over the past year, 63-year-old grain vendor Meng Qingyu said
he recently hiked the price of rice by 11% to about 25 cents a pound. "I
can't stop the price from rising," he said. "People always complain."

It's not just an issue for his customers. Mr. Meng, who's been running
his grain shop selling rice and other goods on a bustling street in downtown
Shanghai for 15 years, said that higher grain prices have already wiped out
some of his profits. The trend could worsen if prices keep climbing.

In the foothills outside Manila, scientists at the International Rice
Research Institute, a laboratory with a staff of 1,000, are scrambling to
overcome these problems by breathing new life into the revolution their
predecessors helped create.

Some researchers are experimenting with seed varieties that can
withstand droughts or floods. Others are growing rice in dry soil, much like
corn, rather than flooded paddies. Strategies also include trying to alter
the way rice plants perform photosynthesis and concocting hybrid varieties
that can boost yields by as much as 20%.

"We're not naive enough to think we'll solve everything," says Robert
Zeigler, a 56-year-old American who is director general of the IRRI. But
when it comes to new high-tech rice, he adds, "If we don't take a hard look
at that, who the hell will?"

The Green Revolution's benefits reverberated well beyond food,
allowing developing nations like India to set aside fears of famine and
focus more on building modern economies by investing in other industries.
But now economists are worrying about the lack of new advances in
agriculture. Stalled progress, they say, is starting to weigh on growth in
India and elsewhere, and could force governments to divert more resources
back to agriculture or face slower growth in the years ahead.

Dan Basse, president of AgResource Co., a Chicago research firm,
estimates that as many as 55 million to 70 million acres of additional
arable land may need to come on line globally over the next three to four
years just to sustain current agricultural stocks -- already at very low
levels.

Many of the pressures facing rice have been building in other
agricultural products as well, especially in Asia. After years of healthy
gains in production, farmers are also now facing constraints in their
ability to increase yields on wheat, barley, palm oil and other crops.

The construction of factories, apartment blocks and highways is paving
over usable land in China, India and Indonesia. India has underinvested in
agriculture for decades as it fostered its high-tech services and
manufacturing industries. Climate change may be playing a role, too, by
increasing the frequency of extreme droughts and floods.

Surrounded by about 500 acres of test paddies, the scientists from
IRRI raise plants in climate-controlled chambers from more than 80,000 seed
varieties collected by IRRI since the 1960s. The seeds are stored in a
refrigerated unit with walls thick enough to withstand a nuclear blast near
Manila.

Some of the institute's recent advances already are being tested in
the Punjab, including one strain of rice that grows in dry dirt. But the
scientists readily acknowledge it is an uphill battle to find breakthroughs
that will make a big difference. Many of their innovations -- like some that
turned out to be highly susceptible to insects -- have fallen far short of
expectations.

At the same time, demand for some agricultural commodities is
expanding at its fastest pace in decades as new markets open up for grains
to make ethanol and other types of alternative energy. That has sent grain
prices soaring. It also has increased the price of foods that aren't used
for alternative fuel, including rice, because farmers are dedicating more
land to alternative-energy crops. The amount of land dedicated to rice has
fallen to less than 380 million acres from 385 million acres in 1999 and
many economists believe it will decline further.

Although rice yields are still inching up world-wide -- by slightly
less than 1% a year, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- the rate of
increase has slowed considerably since the 1970s and 1980s, as gains from
high-tech seeds developed in the 1960s and afterwards peter out. Stocks of
rice -- which is responsible for one fifth of the world's caloric intake --
are at their lowest levels since the 1970s when food shortages led to
temporary famines in Asia.

Hostile Environments

One answer, economists and experts say, is to find ways to cultivate
rice in less-than-ideal land and in marginal places. Similar strategies are
now being tested in the mining and oil industries, which are trying to eke
out new supplies from hostile environments or ever-more remote locations.

The IRRI was founded during similar concerns about food supply in the
1950s and 1960s. At that time, world leaders worried that famines would
increase as populations rose in developing nations such as India.

Then scientists at a research station in Mexico introduced new wheat
varieties that could respond better to fertilizer and produce more grain.

The Rockefeller and Ford foundations founded IRRI in 1960 with the
Philippines government to seek similar results in rice. U.S. President
Lyndon Johnson visited the site in 1966 to spur the scientists on.

India was quick to adopt one result of the institute's early research:
IR8, a rice variety that produced more grains of rice per plant when
properly plied with fertilizer and water. Government officials chose the
Punjab, a region north of New Delhi, the capital, because it had a reliable
water supply and a history of agricultural innovation.

By the mid-1990s, rice yields had risen to six tons a hectare, or
about 2? acres, from two tons in the 1960s. Other states emulated Punjab's
success and other countries adopted the new seeds. The price of rice dropped
to a low of less than $200 a ton in 2001 from more than $550 a ton in the
1970s. Since the 1990s, India has been a major net exporter of rice,
shipping nearly 4.5 million tons last year.

But annual yield increases began to slow over the past decade. Farmers
cranked up fertilizer and water use, draining the water table. Many began
planting two crops a year, taxing the soil. Punjabi area officials
discouraged farmers from planting two crops and in some places outlawed it,
but many farmers ignored them.

"I'm doing mischief against the government," concedes Kanwar Singh, a
32-year-old farmer, as he surveyed his second rice crop recently on a
stretch of flooded land near the northern India city of Karnal. He says he
now has to pump water from 300 feet below the surface, compared with 70 feet
10 years ago. "In a year or two, maybe it will be finished," he says.

At IRRI, officials figure the only way to slip this trap is to come up
with new technologies -- a major emphasis since Mr. Zeigler became the
director general in 2005. A bearded, professorial figure, he is an ardent
proponent of agricultural technology, including genetically modified seeds.

A former Peace Corps volunteer in the early 1970s, Mr. Zeigler says he
saw first hand how the failure of a key crop, cassava, could cause
starvation and other problems in Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic
of Congo.

"They thought it was witch doctors, evil spirits," he says. "I
thought, if we could use science to bring some of the benefits to people,
we'd really be making a difference."

He studied at Cornell University, and worked with Peter Jennings, a
scientist who was one of the founding fathers of the Green Revolution in
rice. He also worked for agriculture programs in Burundi in Africa before
joining IRRI in 1992.

When he took the helm, Mr. Zeigler tried to energize and focus the
institution's research, often by taking advantage of recent improvements in
scientific knowledge of the genetic makeup of rice. He also pressed
researchers to delve into technological solutions to climate change and its
effects on rice so that rice could grow on stressed land and be more
resistant to floods and droughts.

Looking for Breakthroughs

"Zeigler believes that with a few imaginative scientists, you can
really make a change," says Randy Barker, an agricultural economist who
worked at IRRI in the 1960s and 1970s and recently returned to serve as
acting head of IRRI's social-sciences department. Though he acknowledges
some progress, "I don't see any major breakthroughs," he says.

Some rural-development experts have criticized IRRI sharply over the
years for promoting rice varieties like IR8 that require heavy doses of
water, fertilizer and other chemicals. They believe those methods
contributed to the same environmental problems that the IRRI worries about
now. They also fear that IRRI's tech-heavy slant could leave farmers
dependent on expensive new seeds that require special care or costly
chemicals to generate good results.

Scientists at IRRI "see plants as little machines and redesign them"
endlessly, but that's not always the best approach, says Norman Uphoff, a
Cornell University professor and rice specialist. He acknowledges that the
IRRI is doing some good work. But he is from the camp that advocates
lower-tech solutions such as spacing seeds farther apart so the plants can
get more sunlight. That simple technique, he says, can boost plant growth.

Officials at IRRI say that some past approaches might have
short-changed the environment, but that higher rice yields also helped save
lives. The institute says it is now far more focused on environmentally
sustainable technologies such as methods that use less water.

IRRI's annual budget of about $30 million comes chiefly from
development agencies in the U.S., Japan and other wealthy countries, though
it does accept some money from private companies. Although companies like
Monsanto Co. of the U.S. also do some rice research, the industry also
relies heavily on IRRI to lead the way. When IRRI develops new seeds it
makes them available for free to anyone who requests them.

In labs housed in IRRI's cluster of office blocks, Abdelbagi Ismail, a
Sudanese scientist, is working on developing flood-tolerant rice strains.

Although rice typically grows in water, some portion of the plant
usually must remain above the water to take in oxygen. To produce
flood-tolerant strains, Mr. Ismail takes existing rice varieties, often from
IRRI's seed bank, that tend to do well in floods. He then mixes varieties
together to breed better strains. He raises them in outdoor fields as well
as indoor, climate-controlled growth chambers that allow him to control the
amount of light and humidity. "Then we see which ones make it," he says.

In a field a short drive from his office, the results are clear. The
entire area was submerged underwater for 15 days. On one side, where he
planted ordinary rice seeds, most of the stalks are now dead or gone. A few
feet away, a thick harvest of erect stalks shoots up from the ground -- the
product of flood-tolerant seeds.

Similar varieties are currently being distributed in India and other
countries to test their success in real-world settings.

Researchers also are cultivating "aerobic" rice that can grow in dry
soil rather than flooded paddies.

One of IRRI's most ambitious projects is known as "C4" rice. The basic
idea is to make rice behave more like corn and other plants that perform a
particularly efficient form of photosynthesis involving four carbon atoms.
Rice photosynthesis involves only three carbon atoms.

One approach under consideration, though not yet performed, involves
genetically modifying the plant by transplanting genes from corn or other C4
plants into rice to see if it produces a C4 rice crop.

John Sheehy, a British physicist heading the research, contends that
C4 rice could boost rice production by as much as 50%, while potentially
reducing its need for water and fertilizer.

Genetic Considerations

The prospect of genetically modifying rice is opposed by anti-GMO
advocates, who fear it could result in unexpected diseases, crop failures or
other problems. GM Watch, a United Kingdom-based group that opposes the use
of genetically modified organisms, includes IRRI on its list of "who's who
in the fight to force-feed us GMOs."

Other critics contend that C4 simply isn't a good use of research
funds because of the risk it won't result in higher yields or produce seeds
too expensive for farmers to buy.

Mr. Zeigler concedes C4 could be "a total fizzle." But he says it's
still worth the time and effort given that other approaches can't generate
such large yield gains.

Once a promising new seed is developed, IRRI officials work with local
governments and universities to help spread the word to farmers through
newspapers and agricultural fairs. But persuading farmers to use
technologies like aerobic seeds is not always easy.

Slowly, though, some farmers are adopting IRRI's innovations. Lakhbir
Singh, 35, this year planted aerobic rice for the first time at his farm in
northern India. He says his costs have tripled over the past decade. His
well was about 60 feet deep 10 years ago; now, it's down to 450 feet, and he
has to use a special submersible engine to help haul the water to surface.
The health of his soil has deteriorated, so he's using more fertilizer.

"I'm still a little doubtful," he says. "But if it works, that will be
good -- we'll save some natural resources."


[online.wsj.com]