'Waterproof' rice to tackle crop loss in Bangladesh

---

WASHINGTON, Nov 23 (ANI): ‘Waterproof’ versions of popular varieties of rice, which can withstand two weeks of complete submergence, have successfully passed tests in farmers’ fields in Bangladesh and India, and can tackle the problem of major crop losses due to flooding.
The flood-tolerant versions of the 'mega-varieties' of rice, which are high-yielding varieties popular with both farmers and consumers that are grown over huge areas across Asia, are effectively identical to their susceptible counterparts, but recover after severe flooding to yield well.
Several of these varieties are now close to official release by national and state seed certification agencies in India and Bangladesh, where farmers suffer major crop losses because of flooding of up to four million tonnes of rice per year.
This is enough rice to feed 30 million people.
The new varieties were made possible following the identification of a single gene that is responsible for most of the submergence tolerance.
The activation of this gene under submergence counteracts the escape strategy.