According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, rice is the world’s third-largest crop after wheat and maize. It’s the staple food in large regions of the world, and with increasing demand and the perceived perils of a changing climate, the vulnerability of rice production to droughts is a growing concern. The RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) is developing new transgenic strains of rice incorporating a gene from the weed thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) to make them more drought-resistant. The CSRS scientists say that plants are able to adapt to drought by generating chemicals called osmoprotectants that include various forms of sugar. By increasing the concentration of the protectants in cells, they retain water better – much in the same way, to make a crude analogy, a damp salt cake dries out more slowly than a dish of water. Sick of Ads? More than 700 New Atlas Plus subscribers read our newsletter and website without ads….

BAYLA, Somalia – Like many Somalis, Hassan Samanthar has had to travel more than 600 kilometers (371 miles) in search of water and grass in a country that is on the brink of famine due to a lack of rainfall.
Samanthar started his journey along with one of his sons two months ago from the central Somali village of Galkayo, as he faced the despair of seeing his cattle die of starvation.
Samanthar lost more than 50 goats during his trip and expressed his disappointment after also finding drought in Bayla.
Water trucks from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) supply water to the most affected communities in Puntland, where water scarcity has led to price increases.
Ali Asair was captured by the epa photographer tending to his camel as he traveled hundreds of kilometers looking for suitable pastures for his animals.
In Bandarbeyla, farmers were pictured tending to a flock of sheep, providing them with water, and a vet injecting them with multivitamins.
The population has been forced to resort to sources of non-potable water, triggering a new outbreak of cholera that has already affected about 8,000 people in 11 regions, primarily in the south of the country.
Despite Somalia’s desperate situation, international organizations insist that acting urgently can still prevent hundreds of thousands of people from dying.
Enter your email address to subscribe to free headlines (and great cartoons so every email has a happy ending!)
from the Latin American Herald Tribune: addthis_pub = ‘artevenezuela’;

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has warned that ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa have sharply deteriorated food security and reduced nutrition levels, leaving approximately 30 million people unsure of their next meal.
The FAO Regional Overview of Food Insecurity in the Near East and North Africa, released on March 27, stated that the intensity of conflicts and protracted crises have led to the prevalence of food insecurity in the areas over the past five years.
“Countries such as Iraq, Sudan, Syria and Yemen have rates that are among the highest in the world, reflecting the devastating impacts of the ongoing conflicts on their food security and nutrition situation,” the UN agency’s report pointed out.
“The region is facing unprecedented challenges to its food security due to multiple risks arising from conflicts, water scarcity and climate change,” FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for the Near East and North Africa Abdessalam Ould Ahmed said.
The FAO Regional Overview underlined that water scarcity and climate change are the most fundamental challenges to ending hunger, achieving food security, improving nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture by 2030.
The numbers of people suffering from food insecurity and internally displacement are also rising in Iraq and Yemen, the FAO said.
The United Nations has said that a third of Yemen’s 22 provinces are on the brink of famine, warning that more than half of the country’s population is going hungry.
Luescher stressed that even the Yemenis that are lucky enough to get aid are not receiving all the nutrients they need as full rations cannot be afforded.
Yemen’s Legal Center of Rights and Development announced on Saturday that the Saudi campaign against its impoverished southern neighbor has claimed the lives of over 12,040 Yemenis and left more than 20,000 others wounded.
The center added that there were a total of 2,568 children and 1,870 women among the fatalities, noting that the atrocious onslaught had also destroyed 757 schools and institutes, 111 university facilities, 271 factories besides 1,520 bridges and roads.

Researchers at the German Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) found the Amazon rainforest could be exposed to higher risks of dieback if dry seasons intensify and rainfall decreases. This could lead to a vicious dieback circle, they said in a study published in Nature Communications. “The Amazon rainforest is one of the tipping elements in the Earth system,” said lead-author Delphine Clara Zemp, who conducted the study at PIK. “We already know that on the one hand, reduced rainfall increases the risk of forest dieback, and on the other hand, forest loss can intensify regional droughts,” she said. “So, more droughts can lead to less forest leading to more droughts and so on. Yet the consequences of this feedback between the plants on the ground and the atmosphere above them so far was not clear.” The researchers found the close relationship between deforestation and drought could put the Amazon further at risk. When it rains, trees absorb water through their roots and then release it back into the atmosphere. Tropical forests produce most of the water they need themselves: they pump moisture which then rains back to them. Yet logging and warmer air – due to greenhouse gas emissions – reduce precipitation and hinder the moisture transport from one forest area to the other, affecting even remote areas. ‘Vicious circle’ “Then happens what we call the ‘cascading forest loss,'” said co-author Anja Rammig from the Technical University of Munich, who is currently working as a guest scientist at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact…

Nearly 1,000 feet below the bed of the Dead Sea, scientists have found evidence that during past warm periods, the Mideast has suffered drought on scales never recorded by humans—a possible warning for current times. Thick layers of crystalline salt show that rainfall plummeted to as little as a fifth of modern levels some 120,000 years ago, and again about 10,000 years ago. Today, the region is drying again as climate warms, and scientists say it will get worse. The new findings may cause them to rethink how much worse, in this already thirsty and volatile part of the world. “All the observations show this region is one of those most affected by modern climate change, and it’s predicted to get dryer. What we showed is that even under natural conditions, it can become much drier than predicted by any of our models,” said lead author Yael Kiro, a geochemist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. The findings were just published in an early online edition of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. The landlocked Dead Sea, straddling Israel, Jordan and Palestinian lands, is earth’s lowest spot on land. Its current shoreline lies about 1,300 feet below sea level, and its floor extends down another 900 feet. Fed mainly by the Jordan River drainage, which extends also into Syria and Lebanon, it is a dead end for water, and so is extremely salty; its Biblical name in Hebrew is Yām ha-Melah, the sea of salt. In recent years, its level has dropped about four feet a year. But hot, dry weather is not the main cause yet; rather, booming populations in the region need more water than ever, and people are sucking so much from the watershed, very little reaches the…