Science Magazine
Volume 303, Number 5656
via Agnet Jan 15/04

Climate change is expected to cause rising sea levels in coastal rice-growing areas everywhere. A team of scientists led by Ajay Parida at the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in Chennai has now taken a salinity-resistance gene, which they isolated 3 years ago from a coastal-growing mangrove, and put it into several Indian rice varieties.

In greenhouse experiments, the plants have grown in water three times as salty as seawater. Last month the government approved a field trial for the new variety.

Vibha Dhawan, director of bioresources at The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, says salt-resistant food crops are needed not just in the face of global warming but because soil salinity is a major consequence of the intensive chemical fertilizer use and overirrigation prompted by the Green Revolution. MSSRF estimates that about one-third of all irrigated land is now affected by salinization.