Two UF professors have found a way to efficiently grow rice and other crops in communities suffering from a drought.
Rao Mylavarapu and Yuncong Li, professors in UF’s soil and water science department of the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, introduced a concept called aerobic rice production with the help of a Ph. D. candidate, a professor from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and a colleague from India.
The professors conducted the two-year study at the UF-International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics International Distance Education Center in India.
For hundreds of years, rice was grown in two phases. First, the seeds are planted under water in a nursery. Then, after they sprout, the rice is transplanted to the main field under more standing water.
Aerobic rice production, which skips the nursery phase, requires 37 to 45 percent less water than the traditional flooded paddy field system of production, according to the study.
In India, the government guarantees farmers a certain profit per kilogram for growing rice. This incentive encourages farmers to grow rice instead of other crops that use less water, Li said.
The new method aims to address the lack of rainwater and groundwater in the region.
Researchers are still studying the aerobic process, trying to increase yield and find a way to suppress weeds without using excess water.
“The philosophy in the U.S. is the same,” Li said. “We try to use less water and grow better crops.“
In the future, this research and similar studies may be useful in the production of other crops in India, the U.S. and around the globe.
“Water has become the most important natural resource in the world,” he said. “That’s the idea of our project — long-term sustainability of resources.”
