An assessment of irrigated rice production energy efficiency and environmental footprint with in-field and off-field rice straw management practices.

The research provided scientific evidences for improved rice straw management. Rice cultivation with in-field burning of rice straw is the worst option with the lowest energy efficiency and highest air pollution emission. This article comprises a comparative assessment of energy efficiency and the environmental footprint of rice production using four different rice straw management scenarios, namely, straw retained, straw burned, partial straw removal, and complete straw removal. Paddy yield, grain quality, and energy balance were assessed for two seasons while greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) were measured weekly starting from land preparation through to the cropping and fallow period. Despite the added energy requirements in straw collection and transport, the use of collected rice straw for mushroom production can increase the net energy obtained from rice production systems by 10-15% compared to burning straw in the field. Partial and complete removal of rice straw reduces GHGE by 30% and 40% compared to complete straw retention, respectively.

Increasing sensitivity of methane emission measurements in rice through deployment of 'closed chambers' at nighttime.

This study comprises field experiments on methane emissions from rice fields conducted with an Eddy-Covariance (EC) system as well as test runs for a modified closed chamber approach based on measurements at nighttime. The EC data set covers 4 cropping seasons with highly resolved emission rates (raw data in 10 Hz frequency have been aggregated to 30-min records). The diel patterns were very pronounced in the two dry seasons with peak emissions at early afternoon and low emissions at nighttime. These diel patterns were observed at all growing stages of the dry seasons. In the two wet seasons, the diel patterns were only visible during the vegetative stages while emission rates during reproductive and ripening stages remained within a fairly steady range and did not show any diel patterns. In totality, however, the data set revealed a very strong linear relationship between nocturnal emissions (12-h periods) and the full 24-h periods resulting in an R2-value of 0.8419 for all data points. In the second experiment, we conducted test runs for chamber measurements at nighttime with much longer deployment times (6 h) as compared to measurements at daylight (typically for 30 min). Conducting chamber measurements at nighttime excluded drastic changes of temperatures and CO2 concentrations. The data also shows that increases in CH4 concentrations remained on linear trajectory over a 6h period at night. While end CH4 concentrations were consistently >3.5 ppm, this long-term enclosure represents a very robust approach to quantify emissions as compared to assessing short-term concentration increases over time near the analytical detection limit. Finally, we have discussed the potential applications of this new approach that would allow emission measurements even when conventional (daytime) measurements will not be suitable. Nighttime chamber measurements offer an alternative to conventional (daytime) measurements if either (i) baseline emissions are at a very low level, (ii) differences of tested crop treatments or varieties are very small or (iii) the objective is to screen a large number of rice varieties for taking advantage of progress in genome sequencing.