LSU Mechanical Engineering Professor, AgCenter Receive $10M Grant to Design New Variety of Rice
June 19, 2023
Thanks to a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute
of Food and Agriculture sector, LSU Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Manas
Gartia is collaborating with a team of 24 researchers across five states under the
leadership of LSU AgCenter Professor Prasanta Subudhi to develop a new climate-resilient
rice.
“Over the last 40 years, land-use efficiency for U.S. rice has increased by 39% while water and energy use, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), and soil losses have declined by 28-52%,” Gartia said. “Nonetheless, many of the rice production practices used in the U.S. are still resource-intensive. The U.S. rice industry has set ambitious goals of increasing land-use efficiency by 10% and reducing water and energy use, GHG emissions, and soil losses by 8-13% by 2030,” he said. “This proposal is developed to accomplish these sustainability goals in the U.S. rice production system and is based on two hypotheses.”
The project is part of the Scholarship First Agenda's Agriculture focus and LSU's commitment to sustaining and supporting the agriculture economy of Louisiana.