Nalley Lawton, Tsiboe Francis, Durand-Morat Alvaro, Shew Aaron, Thoma Greg
Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, United States of America.
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2016 Dec 1;11(12):e0167295. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0167295. eCollection 2016.
Rice blast (Magnaporthe oryzae) is a key concern in combating global food insecurity given the disease is responsible for approximately 30% of rice production losses globally-the equivalent of feeding 60 million people. These losses increase the global rice price and reduce consumer welfare and food security. Rice is the staple crop for more than half the world's population so any reduction in rice blast would have substantial beneficial effects on consumer livelihoods. In 2012, researchers in the US began analyzing the feasibility of creating blast-resistant rice through cisgenic breeding. Correspondingly, our study evaluates the changes in producer, consumer, and environmental welfare, if all the rice produced in the Mid-South of the US were blast resistant through a process like cisgenics, using both international trade and environmental assessment modeling. Our results show that US rice producers would gain 69.34 million dollars annually and increase the rice supply to feed an additional one million consumers globally by eliminating blast from production in the Mid-South. These results suggest that blast alleviation could be even more significant in increasing global food security given that the US is a small rice producer by global standards and likely experiences lower losses from blast than other rice-producing countries because of its ongoing investment in production technology and management. Furthermore, results from our detailed life cycle assessment (LCA) show that producing blast-resistant rice has lower environmental (fossil fuel depletion, ecotoxicity, carcinogenics, eutrophication, acidification, global warming potential, and ozone depletion) impacts per unit of rice than non-blast resistant rice production. Our findings suggest that any reduction in blast via breeding will have significantly positive impacts on reducing global food insecurity through increased supply, as well as decreased price and environmental impacts in production.
稻瘟病（稻瘟病菌）是应对全球粮食不安全问题的一个关键关注点，因为这种病害导致全球约30%的水稻产量损失，相当于可供6000万人的粮食量。这些损失推高了全球大米价格，降低了消费者福利和粮食安全。大米是世界一半以上人口的主食，因此稻瘟病的任何减少都将对消费者生计产生重大有益影响。2012年，美国的研究人员开始分析通过顺基因育种培育抗稻瘟病水稻的可行性。相应地，我们的研究使用国际贸易和环境评估模型，评估了如果美国中南部生产的所有水稻都通过类似顺基因技术的过程实现抗稻瘟病，生产者、消费者和环境福利的变化。我们的结果表明，美国水稻生产者每年将获得6934万美元的收益，并且通过消除美国中南部水稻生产中的稻瘟病，增加的水稻供应量可多养活全球另外100万消费者。这些结果表明，鉴于按全球标准美国是一个小水稻生产国，并且由于其在生产技术和管理方面的持续投资，可能比其他水稻生产国遭受的稻瘟病损失更低，减轻稻瘟病对增加全球粮食安全的作用可能更大。此外，我们详细的生命周期评估（LCA）结果表明，生产抗稻瘟病水稻每单位水稻对环境（化石燃料消耗、生态毒性、致癌性、富营养化、酸化、全球变暖潜能值和臭氧层损耗）的影响低于生产非抗稻瘟病水稻。我们的研究结果表明，通过育种减少稻瘟病对通过增加供应减少全球粮食不安全，以及降低生产中的价格和环境影响将产生显著的积极影响。
