Future Rice Production Research
Have you ever thought about where your rice comes from? Or have you ever wondered if there will be enough in the future?
Well over half of all people on the Earth eat rice every single day!
Unfortunately, global rice yields (rice production) are already falling behind population growth. Plus it's becoming increasingly contaminated with arsenic and cadmium, which cause cancer and other negative health effects.
And it's only getting worse because of increasing heat stress (climate change), which then also causes increased contamination.
Already, there are over 100 million people that have arsenic poisoning. Meaning it's the largest mass poisoning ever, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
So we're staring down a growing population of people (half of whom eat rice every day), less rice, and more contamination. Not a great combo...
My research essentially focused on answering, "Ok, what can we do to grow enough safe rice in the future?"
The promising solution I explored was using specific irrigation methods to change up the soil biology and chemistry so that the rice doesn't take up the arsenic as much, and we can produce more rice.
