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Japan looks to Australia for help with rice shortages


Queensland, Australia
August 30, 2010

University of Queensland (UQ) research has found Queensland wild rice may have a part to play in tackling global food shortages.

Professor Robert Henry, director of the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI), said Japan was looking to North Queensland for ideas on how to ensure its rice crops survived.

“It seems that we don't have these wild rices left in Asia because the expansion of rice domestication has effectively depleted the presence of the wild populations,” Professor Henry said.

“Internationally we're seeing people now start to use these Australian wild rices to breed crops that might cope with new stresses in the environment and help to meet the need for future food security, which is increasingly capturing people's attention.

“These issues are very strong in the minds of people in Asia and countries where they've got large populations and a limited ability to produce food.”

While North Queensland is not somewhere you might expect to find wild rice, Professor Henry said it was one example of an Australian wild plant whose agricultural potential had been overlooked.

“We've tended to think of agriculture in Australia as being based on imported plants and animals because we really imported northern hemisphere agriculture,” he said.

“It may be that in Australia there are very useful close relatives of those important plants growing wild.

“They represent a resource for diversifying our agriculture, making it better adapted and suitable to the Australian environment, but also to similar environments worldwide.”

Along with colleagues at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto, Professor Henry and a network of collaborating Australian researchers are exploring the relationships between Australian and Japanese rices.

QAAFI's labs use DNA techniques to test whether species could be interbred.

Rice was domesticated in Asia approximately 7000 years ago, probably after the sea level rose and separated Australia from Asia.

“Australian wild rices are probably similar to the rices that would have existed in Asia prior to domestication,” Professor Henry said.

“Potentially we could use the wild rices to bring more diversity into cultivated rice, and to make it more drought, pest and disease resistant.”

Professor Henry said the project was a great example of the role Australian biodiversity could play in the sustainability of agriculture in the future, and the work being conducted at QAAFI.

“We will be working with a whole range of tropical crops. We're working with plant-based agriculture, animal-based agriculture and we're also working post-farm gate – at the food processing stage,” he said.

QAAFI – a joint collaboration between UQ and the Queensland Government's Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation – is a new research institute of UQ headquartered at St Lucia and based at sites throughout Queensland.



More news from: University of Queensland


Website: http://www.uq.edu.au

Published: August 30, 2010

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