Effects of Climate Change On Food Production In Asia.

Climate change impact on agriculture is likely to arise from higher climate variability with increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events i.e. heat-waves, severe droughts, floods and sea-water intrusion in coastal rice producing areas. Rice accounting for 35-75% of calorie consumption by more than 3 billion Asian’s, is undoubtedly the most important food crop. Due to its wide geographic distribution, it is often accompanied by greater vulnerability to changing climates. Rice is predominantly grown under fully flooded conditions with minimum adverse environmental effects, but with increasing temperatures significant yield losses have been recorded in China, Japan and other Asian countries. Further, with higher evaporative losses, severe drought stress conditions are often brought forward, to coincide with sensitive developmental stages i.e. flowering. Regions affected by combined heat and drought stress are therefore increasing. In addition, a greater thermal expansion of water, melting of ice-caps accompanied by erratic precipitation patterns has increased inundation and salinity intrusion into highly productive deltaic rice cultivation areas. To add to the complexity, rice is faced with the daunting task to overcome a combination of these stresses depending on the geographic location. At IRRI, multidisciplinary teams are working towards developing rice varieties capable of withstanding these rapid climatic changes. The main goal is to exploit genetic variation in the rice germplasm to identify QTL/candidate genes/proteins/metabolites for a range of abiotic stresses mentioned above, to create a repository of sources to induce/enhance tolerance. Decades of research efforts have allowed us to identify some of these sources and efforts towards combining tolerance to multiple stresses e.g. salinity + submergence or drought + submergence etc. are ongoing. Progress in achieving this goal to safeguard Asia’s food security and the role of the recently established Global Rice Science Partnership in accelerating these efforts will be highlighted.