Tell Congress to support nanoscale selenium for rice in the Farm Bill!

A landmark new study by a team-up of U.S. and Chinese researchers has discovered that spraying a suspension of nanoscale selenium, a chemical element, can boost rice growth while reducing fertilizer needs by up to 30%!

“We used an aerial drone to lightly spray rice growing in a paddy with the suspension of nanoscale selenium…

That direct contact means that the rice plant is far more efficient at absorbing the selenium than it would be if we applied it to the soil.”

— Lead author Chuanxi Wang of the new study.

The selenium acts as a sort of micronutrient improving the rice plants’ nitrogen use efficiency, allowing them to get more usable nitrogen from smaller amounts of nitrogen-based fertilizer. This sounds niche, but it’s a big deal: the production and use of common nitrogen fertilizers accounts for about 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and nitrogen fertilizer runoff often creates oxygen-depleted “dead zones” downstream and in the ocean.

“While maintaining comparable yields to conventional practice, we observed significant improvements in rice quality parameters including crude protein, amino acids, and Se content. Furthermore, the application of this…technology reduced environmental negative impacts by 41.0% and increased economic benefits by 38.2% per ton of rice produced, relative to conventional practices.”

— “Nanotechnology-driven coordination of shoot–root systems enhances rice nitrogen use efficiency,” PNAS study.

The discovery of the benefits of nanoscale selenium applications for rice-growing is yet another amazing new innovation to advance resilient and abundant agriculture! Congress is still considering the next Farm Bill, a huge investment in American agriculture (the U.S. spends an average of $648 billion per year on Farm Bill programs) that’s up for renewal for the first time since 2018. The just-getting-started field of real-time crop alert technology is a relatively new invention and not really on the political radar screen yet. That means there’s a really great opportunity here for Congress to use the Farm Bill to help promote its deployment across America with supportive tax and regulatory incentives!

Tell Congress to support nanoscale selenium for rice in the Farm Bill!