In a second paper in the same issue, Muhammad Ibrahim and colleagues from Pakistan’s University College of Agriculture and Government College University as well as the South Korea’s National Academy of Agricultural Science, looked at salt levels in soil and the effect on rice growth. They took twenty day old rice plants and transplanted them into clay pots filled with either normal or saline soil. They found that the saline soil had a significant effect on the growth of the rice, but when they applied compost the results improved. Further work is needed to optimise the compost mixture and resulting growth but their work provides hope for many poor rice farmers as compost can be locally made and produced from a variety of waste materials.