Rice grown using seawater in Dubai’s deserts
scmp.com
scmp.com
Wonder if this was a CRISPR project; seems like an exciting development if so, as perhaps the "brackish water resistant" gene could be inserted into other plants as well.
That said, whoever wrote this article doesn't seem to know the difference between a species and a variety, so i'll take it with a grain of salt ;)
Could be a coincidence though.
I figured there's a difference between knowing the method by which something works and simply that it does.
Growing the strains of rice near the shores of saline lakes could perhaps be part of rehabilitation, in which rice crops reduce the saltiness of the land over time.
[0] http://agriculture.vic.gov.au/agriculture/farm-management/so...
Salt accumulation is an issue that needs to be taken care of even with normal irrigation.
[1] https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/08/18/as-sea-levels-...
Considering the crop's nature, we probably have to assume that it won't be used sand for maintaining rice puddles but rather clay or something which can hold water. For higher concentrations of salt partial desalination can be employed. AFAIK, it's only expensive to desalinate if you want drinking water levels, otherwise it's just some filtering. Also, we can expect continuous work on those varieties of salty water rice to eventually be able to support lower and lower desalination maintenance.
It looks to me, thanks to Chinese scientists, the world suddenly has a whole lot more farm land!
A simple thing that everyone can do to help is reducing/stopping meat and dairy consumption, because the additional farmland is used to produce livestock feed.
You'd have to stop doing a hell of a lot more than merely stop eating meat to have any measurable impact.
Also what about the secondary effect ? If you stop eating meat, that will increase supply and reduce demand, and thus drop the price by a lot, which will lead to new customers, both for eating and other applications.
You really want to help ? Buy the rainforest, let it be rainforest. For bonus points, destroy the co2 certificates instead of selling them.
Things just aren't this simple.
Assuming they can get enough fresh water for the dilution, this might work for a limited number of cycles, but what I bet happens in Dubai is that after a period of time that salt builds up in the soil to the point they are unusable even irrigating with fresh water. Unless they can somehow leach the salt well below the root zone which may be possible. After all it is an arid desert and applying a shallow amount of brackish water to a large surface area will result in a lot of evaporation increasing salt content.
(I.e. in land near where rivers and the sea mix, where the salt levels stays higher than fresh, but doesn't keep going up.)
New filtration technologies are emerging that make this far cheaper.
Places near the Dead Sea will probably be a better fit for this kind of rice.
What about the many chemical pollutants and toxins present in sea water. Does this method of agriculture have any affect on produce and land?
Well. This is how they did it.
"Starting in the 19th century, various texts claim that the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus Africanus plowed over and sowed the city of Carthage with salt after defeating it in the Third Punic War (146 BC), sacking it, and enslaving the survivors. Though ancient sources do mention symbolically drawing a plow over various cities, and salting them, none mention Carthage in particular. The Carthage story is a later invention, probably modeled on the story of Shechem."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salting_the_earth#Destroying_c...
Fact is I'd probably have cracked wise anyway. TIL!
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the...
Solar/wind is now comparable in price per kWh to the hydrocarbon cycle.
In addition, there's the idea of using pressurized underground aquifers as an energy store (basically, using bending and lifting of the overlying rocks to store the energy when pressurized water is pumped underground). The pressure can be transfered to a clean seawater stream by a device called a pressure exchanger, which can then be fed into a reverse osmosis plant.
Constructing gas power plants costs a lot less upfront (~½) and uses almost 0 land by comparison. The site time for the construction should also be quite a lot less. So if you want X amount of power available in a certain place next year, new gas generation is a lot more straightforward.
Are we going to breed ourselves to the point we will live like caged chickens? Thats what the future looks like to me.
Having said that, are hunger issues down to lack of production or the politics of food distribution?
Also it should be noted that the link between high salt intake and negative cardiovascular health outcomes is disputed and is likely less significant than the current mainstream medical advice claims. (Like everything related to dietary science, the evidence on both sides of any argument is poor at best. So take it with a grain of salt. Ha.)
The same could be said for Saudi Arabia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrigation_in_Saudi_Arabia#/me...
(and also in Libya IIRC)
Much of the desert you just need to add fresh water and you can grow things. If you salt the land in the process, that's not going to be the case for long, even with brackish-tolerant species.
"Despite its aridity, the Mojave (and particularly the Antelope Valley in its southwest) has long been a center of alfalfa production; fed by irrigation coming from groundwater and (in the 20th century) from the California Aqueduct." [1]
We grow things in the desert, much of California would be dry desert land if not for simple irrigation - California grows a massive proportion of our food.
It’s not a bad situation worse; it’s a hopeless situation better.
Why you would take that position escapes me.