Seeds of hope spring from seawater rice

The Qingdao center turned to a range of innovations to work toward these goals, including gene sequencing to locate genes that enable the rice plant to tolerate salt and alkali, and hybrid breeding to accumulate as many salt-tolerant genes of a single rice plant as possible to reproduce such plants.

The center also signed contracts with China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp for seawater rice seeds to be transported into space.

The measures adopted enhanced the efficiency of breeding seawater rice. On Dec 5, the first batch of rice seeds grown in space returned to Earth with three astronauts on the Shenzhou XIV spaceship after spending 120 days on China's space station.

The first two goals set by Yuan have been met as a result of the measures taken.

In 2017, the Qingdao center developed seeds that yielded 620 kg of rice per 0.67 hectares in water containing 0.6 percent salt. In the past four years, the center has planted seawater rice on 6.67 million hectares of land nationwide, yielding a record-high 698.4 kg per 0.67 hectares last year.

In addition, Chinese teams have received invitations from nations with large areas of saline soil to share their technologies with them.

In July 2018, Khaleej Times, which is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, reported that a team of Chinese scientists had started harvesting rice in diluted seawater, aiming to cover about 10 percent of the UAE with paddy fields to increase grain output on the sand-covered land.

Chinese teams are now cooperating with local officials on seawater rice projects in many other countries.