Recently, the team of Professor Shaobing Peng (National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement of HZAU, and Hubei Hongshan Laboratory), Professor Patricio Grassini’s team (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) and researchers from 13 research institutions worldwide published their research results online in Nature Communications. They made a scientific, comprehensive and systematic evaluation on the yield gap of rice production, greenhouse gas emissions and resource-use efficiency, finding effective ways to achieve green, high-yielding and efficient global rice production and the sustainable development of global rice.
Nowadays, rice plays a vital role in food security because it feeds more than half of the global population. As the world’s population grows, the demand for rice will further increase in the future. However, the combined effects of environmental change, energy shortages and resource degradation make sustainable food supply even harder. Based on this situation, Professor Peng’s team and Professor Patricio Grassini’s team, together with international peer scholars conducted a systematic research in 18 rice-producing countries including Asia, Africa, South America and North America. Those countries account for 88% and 86% of global rice production and harvested rice area, respectively.
According to the “two-step” method of rice cropping system zoning, the research team selected 32 rice cropping systems that differed greatly in terms of geographical location, climatic environment and agronomic management, and analyzed the yield potential and yield gap, greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint, water consumption and water footprint, pesticide toxicity index, nitrogen footprint and nitrogen balance, and labor input and labor productivity of these rice cropping systems.
The research shows that at a global scale, average rice yield represents 57% of yield potential, with a wide range of yield gaps across rice systems. For example, the actual yield of one-third producing areas in the world including northern China, Egypt, Australia, and California has reached 75% of the yield potential. At the other end of the spectrum, average yields are low for rainfed lowland rice in Sub-Saharan Africa and rainfed upland rice in northern Brazil representing 20–40% of the yield potential.
Scenario analysis demonstrates that the total rice yields can rise by 32% by increasing yields in 19 rice cropping systems to 75% of yield potential; The current overall N losses can drop by 95% by decreasing nitrogen surpluses in 8 rice cropping systems.
Providing a new paradigm for the formulation and implementation of national and global priority research and development strategies in agriculture, the research is supported by many parties, such as the International (Regional) Cooperation and Exchange Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Rice Industry Technology system, the Programme of Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities, China Scholarship Council and China postdoctoral Science Foundation.
Source:http://news.hzau.edu.cn/2021/1220/62307.shtml
Translated by: Chen Ru, Zhang Jiefeng, Deng Qingqing
Supervised by: Zhang Juan
