Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from paddy farming by intercropping with other economically useful plants

Summary

Rice is a major staple food crop and a significant natural source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A major increase in the production of rice will be indispensable in order to feed the burgeoning global population and in turn the GHG emissions –particularly methane and nitrous oxide – are expected to increase, unless new mitigation strategies are developed and applied.
This project explores the potential for developing new rice based cropping system integrated with novel strategies to mitigate GHG emissions. There are a number of aquatic plant species, which exists naturally in rice producing regions and are already part of human consumption in local cultures. We plan to test these plant species for their potential to reduce emissions of methane and nitrous oxide while grown together with rice. A number of field and mesocosm experiments will be carried out to understand the processes involved and to establish the proof of concept.