Hybrid rice developed for salty land

A Chinese scientist says he has developed a strain of rice that thrives in salt-encrusted lands.

Zhu Peikun told reporters in the southern Chinese city of Shenzen that he crossed cordgrass with rice to create a hybrid rice strain that can tolerate high levels of salt in the soil.

The hybrid rice strain was tested in the east coast province of Shandong, the second most populated province in China. Based on the results, Zhu said, the hybrid rice could yield as much as 360 kilograms per mu (874 tons per acre).

As much as 75 percent of China's arable land is salina, or land encrusted with salt, Zhu said. Last year, the northeastern province of Jilin invested RMB 6.2 billion ($840 million USD) to transform 270,000 hectares (667,184 acres) of salina into paddy fields.

The project was expected to increase rice production in the region by a third.

Zhu is not the only scientist working on making salt-tolerant crops for China. As part of an agreement signed last year by Davis, Calif.-based Arcadia Biosciences and the government of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, the agricultural biotechnology company was expected to help develop salt-tolerant varieties of rice that Ningxia farmers could grow
on their salina fields (see Arcadia testing nitrogen efficient rice in China).

Earlier this year, China's Ministry of Land and Resources reiterated plans to set aside 1.8 billion mu (297 million acres) of farm land to grow enough grain to feed the nation.

In 2007 610,100 mu of arable land was lost to urban development. An estimated 1.83 billion mu of cultivable land remains.

China's State Grain Information Center estimated that over 511 million tons of grain will be harvested in 2008, the fifth consecutive year that the nation's grain output has increased. Officials attributed the increasing yields to government subsidies, pest control and advances in agricultural technologies.

Scientists have also modified crops such as tomato and eggplant so that they can tolerate being irrigated with seawater.