On October 14th, the ASE Group organized a “2022 World Food Day” activity at Kaohsiung’s K23 International Conference Hall, and invited a team from the International Irrigation R&D Service Center at NNPUST to present some of their related developments. Professor Yumin Wang, a distinguished researcher from center led the team and shared on technology behind the low-carbon rice cultivation methods they have developed.
Working on water-saving rice irrigation technology for more than ten years, the NPUST team created a System of Probiotics and Rice Intensification (SPRI) which combines probiotics and rice water-saving irrigation techniques into a sustainable rice cultivation approach that uses more organic matter, more probiotics, less seedlings, less pesticides, less water and less manpower.
At present, if the agricultural method were to be applied to 170,000 hectares of paddy fields in Taiwan, every year it could save five times the amount of water that is contained in the Zengwen Reservoir while increasing rice production by about 20%. The application of SPRI could also reduce carbon dioxide emissions (CO2e) by 70%. This amounts to approximately 1.8 million metric tons per year—which is equivalent to that of the electricity consumption of 1 million households in Taiwan. Furthermore, when only organic fertilizers are used during production, it can increase the carbon pool of the soil.
With richer resistant starches, the high-quality rice produced using the SPRI method not only can provide consumers with a practical means of participating in water conservation and greenhouse gas reduction, but by purchasing such products they can put individual social responsibility to practice by protecting the environment.
The goal of achieving “net zero carbon emissions” by 2050 has been adopted by many countries around the world in the effort to mitigate global warming. Now, thanks to the ten plus years of hard work by the International Irrigation R&D Service Center at NPUST, the probiotic rice intensified cultivation processes is already being used in large-scale rice production in Taiwan and helping to achieve this goal. The rice produced via this process is also being used to make high-value products such as germinated brown rice and brown rice extract skin care products. At the venue, the exchanges and sharing which took place between businesses and schools resonated broadly, and it is believed that through such approaches as low-carbon rice cultivation and water resources protection, NPUST will be able to use its own brand of development to contribute to the SDG initiative and it them become a reality.
