Jim Grove with G&H Associates, a contract research company in Stuttgart, Arkansas, uses schedule 40, 6-inch PVC pipe to sample rice roots.
2021 rice carbon uptake data Hard numbers may positively affect compensation in the carbon market. By Ronnie Helms, Jim Grove and Trey Helms
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limate-smart farming, sustainable farming practices, green house mitigation and carbon sequestration are terms that are now in many agricultural publications. Depending on the farming practices, several carbon marketing companies will pay farmers to adopt such practices as no-till and cover crops. The adoption and payment for these practices is based on the fact that these practices reduce greenhouse gasses and are part of the attempt to reduce global warming. On our farm, we use conventional minimum-till and no-till planting methods, as well as many other sustainable farming practices when we grow rice, soybeans, corn, millet, oats or wheat.
Evaluating measured parameters In our contract research business, we were asked by an environmental, forward-thinking sustainable company to evaluate five rice varieties or hybrids for yield, biomass and percent carbon of rice roots, straw, whole grains and brokens and bran and rice hulls for total carbon uptake during the growing season to develop baseline information on these measured parameters. I, Ronnie Helms, have worked in rice research for more than 42
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years and have never conducted a really straight-forward simple rice study of this type. The rice varieties or hybrids on which we evaluated grain yields were: RT7321 (9,038 pounds/acre), Delta Grow 263 (7,191 pounds/acre), Titan (5,898 pounds/acre), Diamond (6,007 pounds/acre) and CLL16 (6,549 pounds/acre). The average percent carbon for hybrid in rice varieties was rice roots 0.34%, rice straw 0.401%, whole grain and brokens 0.405%, rice brand 0.44% and rice hulls 0.41%. The total carbon uptake for the measured rice components is presented in Table 1. The carbon uptake was calculated by multiplying the biomass for each component by the percent carbon in each component. Rice roots evaluation Rice root measurements was an interesting part of this study. We used schedule 40, 6-inch PVC pipe to sample the rice roots. Our sampling depth was 12 inches, and we used a front-end loader on a tractor to push the PVC pipe into the soil. We used two sieves to remove the soil from the roots, then washed the soil from the roots. There were rocks, glass and previous crop residue among the roots. RICEFARMING.COM
