The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has given a $1 million grant to a biological engineering professor at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville for his rice cultivation research program.
Associate professor Benjamin Runkle is studying how greenhouse gases can affect rice cultivation. The three-year research program will begin this year, and the grant will fund hiring of a postdoctoral scientist and students for the project, which includes a team from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
“My research group and I have been working on rice farms in Arkansas since 2015, taking careful measurements of the methane emissions from rice fields and how to reduce them safely — so that the farmer’s harvest is not hurt,” Runkle said. “What’s especially exciting about this project is that, by working with colleagues at the University of Illinois, we can now understand these methane emissions across the rice production regions of the United States. We hope to eventually create a system of climate-smart rice production that should help all the rice farmers of Arkansas’s Delta region be more sustainable.”
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