Chile develops rice capable of adapting to climate change

AFP

La Jornada Newspaper, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, p. 6

Ñiquén. In the fields of southern Chile, increasingly affected by drought, a new rice seed promises to transform its cultivation: with less water, it withstands more extreme climates without diminishing its productivity.

For millennia, humanity has flooded rice fields to eliminate weeds and prevent pests, but water scarcity has fueled a race to develop new production techniques for the world's most consumed food.

In the town of Ñiquén, in the Ñuble region south of Santiago, 25-year-old agricultural engineer Javier Muñoz had only ever known how to flood fields to produce grain.

But thanks to scientific research conducted on his land, he managed to reduce water consumption by half and maintain a similar production.

Rice farming has always been flooded; achieving such a profound change is historic , he says.

The technique was developed by Chilean scientist Karla Cordero of the Agricultural Research Institute, who, motivated by the drought that Chile has been experiencing for 15 years—linked by authorities to climate change—developed a more robust rice variety.

This new variety, called jasper, is not a genetically modified plant, but rather the result of crossing a Chilean seed with another of Russian origin, which is more resistant to extreme climates.

Cordero planted the new seed under the rice cultivation intensification system developed in 1983 in Madagascar by a French priest. This method consists primarily of alternating flooding with intermittent irrigation.

We realized it was possible to produce rice without flooding. And despite using fewer seeds, we achieved the same yield as a traditional system , Cordero explains.

In addition, in coordination with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, this technique will be tested in Brazil—the largest American rice producer—Uruguay, and Ecuador.

Jasper rice can better withstand storms, floods and heat waves because it is a more powerful plant, allowing it to produce rice with or without flooding, he notes.

Grows with half the water

Planted in rows spaced 30 centimeters apart, the new variety of long-grain white rice uses only half of the 2,500 liters of water typically required to produce one kilo.

Each seed sprouts nearly 30 daughter plants, almost 10 times more than in a conventional rice field. "It's a step toward the future ," Muñoz celebrates.

Water savings are also being pursued in North America and several countries in East and Southeast Asia , says Robert Zeigler, director of the International Rice Research Institute.