NEURICE project controls soil salinity in Ebro Delta with new varieties of salt-tolerant rice

Greenhouses of the University of Barcelona.
Greenhouses of the University of Barcelona.
Research
(28/08/2017)

NEURICE project started monitoring the salinity of soil salinity in Ebro Delta to test new salt-tolerant rice varieties. The salinity in water and soil of rice crops will be controlled during some months, the height of the water sheet and water salinity to carry out an exact tracking. The next campaign is estimated to plant new rice lines to be evaluated in saline and non-saline soils.

Greenhouses of the University of Barcelona.
Greenhouses of the University of Barcelona.
Research
28/08/2017

NEURICE project started monitoring the salinity of soil salinity in Ebro Delta to test new salt-tolerant rice varieties. The salinity in water and soil of rice crops will be controlled during some months, the height of the water sheet and water salinity to carry out an exact tracking. The next campaign is estimated to plant new rice lines to be evaluated in saline and non-saline soils.

These tests are part of the European funded project called NEURICE, led by the University of Barcelona (UB) and are coordinated by IRTA dʼAmposta and Cámara Arrossera del Montsià. The project also has the important participation of the Research Center on Agrigenomics (CRAG) and the engineering company IRIS, among other international partners. The objective of the project is to develop varieties of rice with commercial value, arable in Mediterranean climates and which can grow in high salinity conditions.

In Ebro Delta, the apple snail plague creates the need to find strategies to prevent the snails from eating young plants. Apart from floods of sea water, another strategy is dry-seeding rice, because without water the snail is inactive. One of the problems of this method is that soil salinity rises with this lack of water. The possibility of seeding varieties with a salt-tolerance would help not only eradicating the apple snail with sea water but also to apply the dry-seeding rice strategy.

Apart from the snail plague, the decrease of productivity in the fields due salinity is one of the main worries of producers. This problem is mainly due the marine intrusion in coastal areas due the regression of the delta due a lack of sediment combined with the climate change, therefore rice crops, mainly deltas, are very vulnerable. Trials with the new varieties will be carried out in rice areas in France and Italy in which salinity problems are also taking place and which are expecting the likely arrival of the apple snail.
 
A hundred salt-tolerant lines will be validated

During the first year of the project, thousands of rice line crossings in the Delta and salt-tolerant varieties have been carried out. The UB, CRAG and the Cámara are getting the seeds of a hundred lines that were chosen for their salinity tolerance, which will be evaluated this winter in hydroponic trials, the best of which will be evaluated in saline and non-saline field trials during the 2018 and 2019 campaigns.

At the same time, the UB is carrying out a protean study on the most salt-tolerant rice variety in the world to determine the mechanism that allows these plants to grow in high salinity environments.