Rice specialists: rice feeds a large part of the population in Thailand. Workers prepare the seedlings for mats that will later be loaded onto seedling machines and then planted.
This cereal is the staple food of the majority of humanity: around 600 million tons of rice are harvested each year around the world. The world population is growing, however, and so is the demand for the high-quality foodstuff. To secure the world’s food supplies until the year 2020, around 20 percent more than today will have to be produced. However, the area of land available to rice growers cannot be enlarged. Yields of the crop therefore have to increase in the future.
Survival course against flooding
At Bayer CropScience’s Innovation Center in Ghent, Belgium, scientists are getting rice plants into shape for the challenge: they are using state-of-the-art molecular biology methods and breeding new, high-yield varieties. In addition, the plants are being made more resistant to disease, drought and flooding. Find out how research scientists are using marker-assisted selection to safeguard the global supply of rice here.