Bummer: Trace amounts of CO2 could allegedly turn the world's rice crop into weeds, producing a crisis in the world's food supply

More Carbon Dioxide in the Air Could Threaten Rice Crops | Inside Science

(ISNS)--The increase in carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere--linked to human-caused global warming--may have another effect scientists hadn’t foreseen. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, MD may have found a consequence that could produce a crisis in the world’s food supply.

Genes from wild, weedy rice, the rice that existed before farmers started to breed rice to emphasize certain traits, could be cross-pollinating with cultivated rice to produce a grain that has many characteristics farmers earlier eliminated.

 The hybrid rice doesn’t look the same as cultivated rice, doesn’t taste the same, and has lost many attributes that make today’s rice a reliable, nutritious food staple. Essentially, 10,000 years of cross-breeding to make rice the staple of billions of people could be undone, turning the crop into weeds.

The Earth’s human population now numbers 7 billion, and currently the world can feed itself. But, if a major grain crop such as rice fails--and as the population continues to soar--the result could be disastrous, said Lew Ziska, a plant physiologist at the USDA, lead scientist in the study.

...The number of flowers produced by the wild rice at the highest carbon dioxide concentrations was double compared to the production at 300 ppm