Hello, I'm Tim Burcham, director of the Northeast Rice Research and Extension Center or the NERREC
as we refer to it here. Today I'm joined by Arlene Adviento-Borbe with the USDA-ARS unit, that's
the Delta Water Management Research Unit. Arlene, welcome! Thank you Dr. Burcham and hello everyone
my name is Arlene Adviento-Borbe and I am a research agronomist for the Delta Water Management
Research Unit here in northeast Arkansas. Today we are in the NERREC farm, and you are looking at our
field trial on greenhouse gas emissions and grain yield response on furrow rice irrigation;
we are working on different rice varieties and their responses under flooded and non-flooded
irrigation systems. So Arlene, I know out here we have some different hybrid varieties
as well as a pure-line variety and also row rice as well as MIRI irrigation types,
can you just share briefly about those types of irrigations and what methodologies and why
we're looking at those management practices? Sure, in this research field we are studying
two different flooding systems for rice one is MIRI, which is a continuously flooded system,
which everybody is familiar with, and we are also having another non-flooded practice and which is
the raw rice or intermittent irrigation or they also called aerobic and anaerobic rice cultivation
we are testing this tool of none and flooded rice systems to understand the response of different
rice varieties in terms of yield and greenhouse gas emissions and at the same time we also would
like to know the potential of rice varieties to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions under flooded
and non-flooded conditions. Well Arlene, as I've come down and we've been going through the growing
season, I noticed a lot of different individuals here so you have a large group, and this type of
research requires a great team, can you talk to us about the team that you put together
for this particular research project? Yeah, we have acquired an army of people researchers who
have expertise in different fields we have a post doc research fellow from the University
of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Dr. Sandhya Karki and she is an expert in nitrous oxide emissions
and greenhouse gas emission calculations. She basically manages our greenhouse gas
measurements in this field we also have a 30-year rise agronomist from the international
rice research institute and his name is Wency Larazo. and he is responsible in the phenomics
staging of the rice crop as well as measuring yield components and grain yields in this field.
The third one in our team is Dylan Tillery. Dylan is a researcher graduated from Arkansas
State University and who would like to be an expert also in rice research and other crops.
The fourth one is a federal employee, Benjamin Levenbach, he is a physical science technician who
just came on board, and he is responsible in the measurements of grain yield as well as greenhouse
gas emissions with Dr. Karki. Last but not the least is Andrezj Monsalud. Andrezj is our student
he's an undergrad student from the Arkansas State University as well and majoring in biological
sciences he would like to gain more experiences in experimental experiments in environment as well as
dealing with sensitive instrumentations as well as measurements of rice and cotton here in northeast
Arkansas. Great, you've got a wonderful team Arlene and they've been very thorough and their
work out here and very consistent, so we really appreciate that. Arlene, can you provide us some
background information on the research that you and your team are implementing here at the NERREC
this year so kind of the big picture a wide scope of what we're doing what you do, what you guys are
doing here and the relevance of that information for our rice growers? Sure, um it has been
reported and it's been known from many scientists that global warming potential is very high in rice
among other cereal crops why because of the methane emissions coming from flooded rice
and also nitrous oxide another greenhouse gas is high in rice paddies or rice cultivation because
of the drain period at the end of the season; now together when you add this to greenhouse gases
it entails higher global warming potential. We also found out in our previous studies that
rice varieties specifically hybrid rice have the potential to reduce methane emissions and
with the combination of non-flooded system and a potentially lower emitter of methane we could come
up in a very uh effective conservation management that would reduce greenhouse gas emission and at
the same time sustain the yield. In this field our focus is mainly looking at management systems that
would give the rice farmers their advantage of having higher or sustaining the high yield
of their field and at the same times lowering the potential to emit higher greenhouse gas emissions
just like methane and nitrous oxide. Well, with regard to your research focus there, who are some
of the major collaborators that are working with you on this particular research project?
So, in addition to the USDA-ARS, we are also working or collaborating with many institutions
one we collaborated with RiceTec Incorporated, we are looking at some of their hybrid varieties
to test whether there is a negative response in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and at
the same times having their yields sustained under flooded and non-flooded conditions.
We also have the University of Arkansas the Division of Agriculture with you Dr. Burcham,
because we would like to have support in terms of the managing of this field and at the same
time helping us to measure grain yields with your equipment and also the expertise coming from your
group. Great, thank you. Well in order to achieve those goals what type of measurements are involved
in this experiment? I know I see your crew down here and it's very uh technological and you've
got a lot of instrumentation here to do these greenhouse gas emission measurements, can you talk
to our audience a little bit about the types of measurements that you have going on here? Yes,
we have quite a number of measurement protocols and instrumentations in this field because
there are many uh metrics that we are measuring in order to achieve our objectives one is we are
implementing flux chamber technique and this is a well-known and conventional way of measuring
greenhouse gas fluxes from the field this together with the gas chromatograph instrument we were able
to measure those three greenhouse gases methane, nitrous oxide and co2. We also measure water
because we compare two different flooding systems one is MIRI or continuously flooded and the other
one is raw rice which is a combination of AWD and MIRI and with these measurements we have
flow meters, we also have water depth, we have soil moisture content because it tells
us when to reflood during the reproductive stage, we also measure soil temperature,
we also measure a different response in terms of fertilizer like phenologies;
Wency is doing a lot of phenological measurements of this rice in terms of
their response to different nitrogen application and this nitrogen application would relate that
to the losses of nitrogen in the field through nitrous oxide emission.
We will also calculate water use efficiency because we can able to measure the amount of
water added to this field. So, there's quite a lot of parameters we are measuring in this field
it's not only gas measurements but the entire suite of metrics that would help us understand
the benefits of having a raw rice versus MIRI and using variety hybrid varieties and non-traditional
system approach in rice cropping. Great, well I know that we're glad to have you here
on the NERREC farm here what were some of the reasons that you guys wanted to set the research
up here? I know you have you have research activities in different parts of the delta when
we talk about the Delta Water Management Research Unit your team has responsibilities for the really
the whole Arkansas delta. What was some of the factors that led you to establish this research
work here at the NERREC farm site? Honestly Dr. Burcham, we are very lucky to have you in this
region because the Delta Water Management Research Unit does not have a lab, we do not have our own
field research, so having this NERREC field uh farms in the Poinsett County, will help us have
much more measurements in terms of the field trials we are doing because of the location
it's close by, it's 20 minutes away from our lab in ABI and also whenever we would like to do some
kind of intensive measurements we are stone throw away from our lab and we can do it anytime. You
know gas emission measurements it's not only one time per week, but it is intensive measurements
so if we have a faraway field like an hour drive it would be impossible for us to do intensive
management and also the reason why we would like our field trials here is because of the expertise
you could bring to our team. We do not have field agronomists, regular agronomists who would attend
the land and Greg Simpson and you Dr. Burcham have been very helpful and very supportive in dealing
with growing of rice specifically managing the rice particularly in this type of study because
our study is a little bit controlled one because we would like to capture all those responses
during the growing season and this uh station is perfect for to do our work here. Well thank you
Arlene and you know this of course is the first year that the farm has been back in production
and of course we've battled some issues here, this particular field is a slope of 0.3 some of
the other fields are much steeper at a 0.1 grade, it is also next to the language river here also
so we've got a little bit of transitional soil types that we deal with here from a titchener to
the henry silt loams that are predominant here, but what a great location to do this
type of research you're in the Poinsett County of course which is the largest rice producing county
in the state of Arkansas and probably the largest rice producing acreage-wise, county in the United
States of America and so it's a great opportunity for your team to be doing research that is in this
high production area and also we're west of the ridge here as well and so we're in an area where
we have declining groundwater and so just like we have a reservoir here to do our irrigation
methodologies here it's a great, it's a great place for us to look at water saving methodologies
going forward for our farmers in Arkansas rice farm. That's true Dr. Burcham, I forgot to mention
that the other main reason why we would like our field here is because this is the place which is
perfect for our field experiments because we are also looking at water use efficiency
and Poinsett County is the perfect place to do research so that it would be doable
if other rice farmers would you know adopt this type of practices in their own field
so we are basically in a reality of doing our measurements in Arkansas instead of a
specific research station. Again, thank you Arlene and thanks to our team of researchers,
we look forward to working with you in the future. It's a pleasure Dr. Burcham, thank you.