Arkansans have heard it all before — rice, for a number of reasons, is an important crop for our state.
But don’t take my word for it — just listen to the experts.
“Arkansas is the largest rice producer in the United States. We plant rice for more than a million acres every year. A lot of the rice industries are here, the milling industries. And also, it employs a lot of people in the agricultural sector,” said Christian De Guzman, an expert on plant breeding and genetics at the University of Arkansas Rice Research and Extension Center.
De Guzman and a team of other researchers are working to breed a rice crop that is more suited for Arkansas’ changing climate.
De Guzman’s work is two-pronged. Part of his job is selective plant breeding. The other part is conducting research on stressors that can affect rice.
“I’m involved in working on abiotic stress tolerance; that is primarily heat, high nighttime temperature and drought,” he said.
These abiotic, or environmental, factors are affecting rice crops right now, according to De Guzman. Because of this, it’s up to people like him to breed a more resilient crop.
“All of those are actually happening in relation to climate change,” he said. “Our high nighttime temperature is increasing, and it’s not just for rice. The high nighttime temperature affects all other crops.”
Arkansas’ agriculture industry is feeling the impact of climate change, but maybe not in the way you’d think — especially if you’ve lived through one of those hot, sticky Southern summers.
“For the Southeast, we haven’t seen the large increases in daytime high temperatures that they’ve seen in the western U.S., or the really fast warming wintertime temperatures like they’ve seen in the northern Plains, where I’m from. What it looks like is it’s warming up over time,” said B.J. Baule, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University and the Southern Regional Climate Center.
“So, when we look at the seasons and break it down, summer and fall we’re really not seeing the high temperatures go up that much. Most of the increases we’re seeing are in the winter and springtime months and then the overnight lows."
A warmer climate can also lead to more water in the atmosphere, Baule said. This doesn’t necessarily mean more rain, but heavier rain events and a faster water cycle.
Along with carbon emissions from human activity, La Niña and El Niño, natural cycles that affect the temperature of the Pacific Ocean, also play a role in climate change.
“We had pretty substantial drought across the southern Plains region in the last couple of years and, I know, extended to Arkansas,” Baule said.
Environmental factors associated with climate change often have a negative effect on rice yields. For example, high nighttime temperatures or extreme heat can result in rice that’s more likely to break during the milling process.
Any kernel that is less than 75% of its original length is considered broken rice. "Brokens," as they’re called in the industry, are used in beer production, pet food and you can often buy it as-is at the grocery store.
Of course, broken rice is cheaper than whole-kernel rice.
“Some years we have low whole-kernel yields, and unfortunately for us in the rice industry, it seems like the low milling yield crops [for whole-kernel rice] are coming more frequently,” Keith Glover, the head of Producers Rice Mill in Stuttgart, said.
Glover is concerned about what more low whole-kernel rice yields mean for farmers.
“When you have high milling for whole-kernels, the price gap between a hundred pounds of whole-kernel versus brokens could be as narrow as $3 to $5 a hundredweight. In years like we've seen recently… you could widen that number up to $10, $15 a hundredweight,” Glover said.
The higher prevalence of broken rice is one of the issues De Guzman is trying to solve through selective rice breeding. Because of the many genes that might affect a single trait, it’s kind of like a puzzle for De Guzman and his team.
“So our preliminary studies show that, for example, high nighttime temperature, just for a single trait... there might be more than three genes,” De Guzman said. “And other traits, for example, related to chalk, there might be more than five.”
De Guzman says solving this puzzle is cutting edge work, as there are no varieties that are currently resistant to heat, high nighttime temperatures or drought.
There are other universities around the world researching and breeding rice crops to be more resilient to climate change, but Arkansas has a distinct advantage. Because many stakeholders in the rice business are located within the state, researchers like De Guzman are doing applied work with the industry’s support.
The creation of a rice crop better suited to withstand environmental stressors is “several years” away, but the data is promising, said De Guzman.
“Plant breeding is still a numbers game. That means we have to plant a lot of plants, make a lot of crosses and selections. And as in other [research and development] it takes time. It will take several years for any plant variety or rice variety to be released,” De Guzman said. “But we are very hopeful because our preliminary results are showing promise.”
With rice farmers' financial returns declining from 2023 to 2025, according to the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture Research and Extension, many will have to weather the storm and find workarounds until the science catches up. But there is hope that a tougher rice crop is coming.
