China’s genetically modified giant-rice harvest feeds Beijing’s narrative on food-security drive
- Experimental rice strain reaches twice as tall as ordinary strains, and its creators say it is more resistant to pests and flooding
- China’s leaders have prioritised food production in the face of climate change, supply-chain upheavals and turbulent geopolitical tensions
China has cultivated its second harvest of genetically modified giant rice in a mountainous region with poor soil, with greater results, and Beijing is hailing the achievement as progress in its efforts to bolster food security amid soaring global rice prices.
The high-yielding home-grown strain of rice, which grows about twice as tall as ordinary rice, was recently harvested at trial farms in southwest China’s Sanzhou county, Guizhou province, the state’s Xinhua reported on Thursday.
In the area famous for its karst landscapes and challenging soil conditions, the yield reached 12.6 tonnes per hectare (11,243 pounds per acre), according to a Xinhua interview with a local farmer who had volunteered to grow the experimental variety. It marked a 5 per cent increase from 12 tonnes per hectare last year.
The party mouthpiece said the giant-rice harvest in such conditions has “great significance for elevating food production and ensuring food security”.
The 12.6-tonne yield from this year’s giant-rice harvest in Guizhou was also nearly 1.8 times greater than the average Chinese rice yield in 2022, which stood at 7.1 tonnes per hectare, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
This giant-rice variety was developed in 2017 by the Institute of Subtropical Agriculture at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Its stalks can reach around two metres tall, and it is more resistant to pests and flooding, according to the institute.