Seasonal methane and nitrous oxide emissions of several rice cultivars in direct-seeded systems

Abstract

An understanding of cultivar effects on field greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in rice ( L.) systems is needed to improve the accuracy of predictive models used for estimating GHG emissions and to evaluate the GHG mitigation potential of different cultivars. We compared CH and NO emissions, global warming potential (GWP = NO + CH), yield-scaled GWP (GWP = GWP Mg grain), and plant growth characteristics of eight cultivars within four study sites in California and Arkansas. Nitrous oxide emissions were negligible (<10% of GWP) and were not different among cultivars. Seasonal CH emissions differed between cultivars by a factor of 2.1 and 1.4 at one California and one Arkansas site, respectively. Plant growth characteristics were generally not correlated with seasonal CH emissions; however, the strongest correlations were observed for shoot and total plant (root + shoot) biomass at heading ( = 0.60) at one California site and for grain at maturity ( = -0.95) at one Arkansas site. Although differences in GWP and GWP were observed, there were inconsistencies across sites, indicating the importance of the genotype × environment interaction. Overall, the cultivars with the lowest CH emissions, GWP, and GWP at the California and Arkansas sites were the lowest and highest yielding, respectively. These findings highlight the potential for breeding high-yielding cultivars with low GWP, the ideal scenario to achieve low GWP, but environmental conditions must also be considered.