@article{c2af6139e5894d89a702ffaef9c4cd21,
title = "Limited potential of harvest index improvement to reduce methane emissions from rice paddies",
abstract = " Rice is a staple food for nearly half of the world's population, but rice paddies constitute a major source of anthropogenic CH 4 emissions. Root exudates from growing rice plants are an important substrate for methane-producing microorganisms. Therefore, breeding efforts optimizing rice plant photosynthate allocation to grains, i.e., increasing harvest index (HI), are widely expected to reduce CH 4 emissions with higher yield. Here we show, by combining a series of experiments, meta-analyses and an expert survey, that the potential of CH 4 mitigation from rice paddies through HI improvement is in fact small. Whereas HI improvement reduced CH 4 emissions under continuously flooded (CF) irrigation, it did not affect CH 4 emissions in systems with intermittent irrigation (II). We estimate that future plant breeding efforts aimed at HI improvement to the theoretical maximum value will reduce CH 4 emissions in CF systems by 4.4%. However, CF systems currently make up only a small fraction of the total rice growing area (i.e., 27% of the Chinese rice paddy area). Thus, to achieve substantial CH 4 mitigation from rice agriculture, alternative plant breeding strategies may be needed, along with alternative management.",
keywords = "climate change, food security, greenhouse gases, meta-analysis, water management",
author = "Yu Jiang and Haoyu Qian and Ling Wang and Jinfei Feng and Shan Huang and Hungate, {Bruce A.} and {van Kessel}, Chris and Horwath, {William R.} and Xingyue Zhang and Xiaobo Qin and Yue Li and Xiaomin Feng and Jun Zhang and Aixing Deng and Chenyan Zheng and Zhenwei Song and Shuijin Hu and {van Groenigen}, {Kees Jan} and Weijian Zhang",
note = "Funding Information: This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program China (2016YFD0300903, 2016YFD0300501, 2017YFD0300104, and 2015BAC02B02), Special Fund for Agro‐scientific Research in the Public Interest (201503122), the China Agriculture Research System ‐ Green Manure (CARS‐22‐G‐16), Central Public‐interest Scientific Institution Basal Research Fund of Institute of Crop Science, the Innovation Program of CAAS (Y2016PT12, Y2016XT01), the GEF Project of Climate Smart Staple Crop Production in China (P144531) and the China Scholarship Council. Funding Information: This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program China (2016YFD0300903, 2016YFD0300501, 2017YFD0300104, and 2015BAC02B02), Special Fund for Agro-scientific Research in the Public Interest (201503122), the China Agriculture Research System - Green Manure (CARS-22-G-16), Central Public-interest Scientific Institution Basal Research Fund of Institute of Crop Science, the Innovation Program of CAAS (Y2016PT12, Y2016XT01), the GEF Project of Climate Smart Staple Crop Production in China (P144531) and the China Scholarship Council. Funding Information: National Key Research and Development Program China, Grant/Award Number: 2016YFD0300903, 2016YFD0300501, 2017YFD0300104, 2015BAC02B02; Special Fund for Agro‐scientific Research in the Public Interest, Grant/Award Number: 201503122; China Agriculture Research System-Green Manure, Grant/Award Number: CARS-22-G-16; Innovation Program of CAAS, Grant/Award Number: Y2016PT12, Y2016XT01; GEF Project of Climate Smart Stable Crop Production in China, Grant/Award Number: P144531; China Scholarship Council Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd",
year = "2019",
month = feb,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1111/gcb.14529",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "25",
pages = "686--698",
journal = "Global change biology",
issn = "1354-1013",
publisher = "Wiley-Blackwell",
number = "2",
}