As part of an effort to develop a rice variety that is tolerant to salt water, an agreement was signed between M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) and the University of Tasmania (UTAS) here on Thursday.
The Australia-India Strategic Research Fund (AISRF) project, awarded to UTAS and MSSRF through a competitive bidding process, will explore the use of a halophytic, wild rice relative (Porteresia coarctata or also called Oryza coarctata) that occurs as a mangrove associate in the inter-tidal mangrove swamps along the coasts of India and Bangladesh.
The three-year project will be supported by the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund (AISRF) during which time, scientists would conduct research on salt-tolerant rice varieties identified from wild species using biotechnology approaches in India and in Australia. The value of the research project is about one million USD.
Sergey Shabala, School of Land and Food, UTAS, said developing a salt-tolerant rice variety was imperative for food security. By 2050, the world’s population is estimated to grow to 9.3 billion and to feed such a large number, there has to be an increase of 38 per cent in food production, he said adding that switching to saline agriculture was inevitable.
“Salinity is a quiet crisis with 950 million hectares of arable land globally affected by it,” he added.
Holger Meinke, Director, School of Land and Food, University of Tasmania, Hobart, who signed the agreement on behalf of UTAS, said “We need to produce as much food in the next 50 years as we did in the entire 10,000-year history of agriculture. This is the reason why we need these kinds of projects.”
V. Selvam, Executive Director MSSRF, the Indian signatory to the project, spoke about the foundation’s work on mangroves and saline-tolerant plants. The Integrated Mangrove Fishing Farming System developed by MSSRF has been recognized as a ‘Blue Solution’ by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, he pointed out.
Ajay Parida, principal investigator for the Indian side of the project, Lana Shabala, from UTAS and Gayathri Venkataraman and Sivaprakash Ramalingam of MSSRF, who shared the techniques that would be employed towards achieving this process, also spoke.
