Rice is the staple food for nearly 50% of the world’s peoples, many in Asia.
The world per capita rice consumption in 1990 was 58 kgyr1 of milled rice.
This represents 23% of the average world per capita caloric intake and 16% of the protein intake (4). Because rice is such an important food source for much of the world, itis imperative to develop ways of reducing the impact of rice agriculture on the global atmosphere and subsequent climate change.
An important finding that may lead to such a reduction while also increasing rice production is presented in the article appearing in this issue of PNAS by Denier van der Gon et al. (5).
These researchers demonstrated that an inverse relationship exists between a rice plant’s capacity to store photosynthetically fixed carbon as grain and seasonally emitted methane.