Aerobic rice: water use sustainability

Rice requires approximately 3000–5000 liters of water to grow one kilogram of rice traditionally. About 22 million hectares of irrigated dry season rice experience “economic water scarcity” in South and Southeast Asia. Therefore, it was felt that there is a need to save water in rice cultivation, which led to development of alternative methods of cultivation i.e., alternate wetting and drying(AWD), saturated soil culture (SSC) and aerobic rice. Aerobic rice is the latest technology that reduces water inputs by growing rice as any other irrigated upland crop. Selection of physiological traits of aerobic rice using molecular approaches may help in enhancing water use efficiency sustaining the productivity.