Let there be light

A unique ultraviolet light treatment can boost crop yields.

- ANDREA GRAVES

There's rice growing in Palmerston North. It's indoors and being paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. What is unusual about this rice is that it's not flooded with water. Such rice is known as dry-seeded rice, and it uses far less water than paddy field rice, which is how almost all rice is grown worldwide. It also avoids the underwater microbial action in flooded fields that makes rice production a surprisingly high methane emitter, albeit much less so per kilo of food than many animal products. Rice is the staple food of about half the world's population.

It is being grown by BioLumic, which has research centres in Palmerston North and the United States and was this year awarded $3.5 million by the Gates Foundation. It aims to develop seed treatments that enhance rice germination rates, seedling growth, weed competitiveness and drought tolerance, which will help enable small-scale growers in India grow dry-seeded rice.