Rice and One health

The concept of ‘One Health’ refers to a collaborative and transdisciplinary approach aiming to optimal health outcomes recognizing the interconnection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment. It is useful to crop production for various reasons, such as the lessons from One Health experience for zoonotic diseases for plant disease surveillance, prediction, prevention and control (Morris et al 2021).

For rice production, this concept refers to agricultural practices that:

• Protect farmer’s and consumer’s health (e.g. pesticide reduction),

• Reduce environmental impact (e.g. limit methane production), and

• Control rice biotic and abiotic stresses, including disease surveillance and prevention.

Reducing pesticide use, and especially avoiding pesticide misuse, is of particular importance to protect rice farmer’s and consumer’s health. In addition to its impact on health, the excessive use of pesticides documented in various areas also leads to unnecessary expenditures for farmers, and potential long-term pollution of the environment.

Growing rice produces methane, a greenhouse gas more than 30 times as potent as carbon dioxide. Designing agricultural practices that reduces greenhouse gas emissions, without reducing yields is an important challenge for rice production. This typically includes water management (e.g. alternate wetting and drying of the paddies), which may be also optimized for saving water (Jiang et al 2019).

Rice production may be hampered by numerous biotic and abiotic stresses leading to visible symptoms and yield reduction. The Rice Doctor, developed by IRRI, is a diagnostics tool to help in identifying problems and provide actionable advice how to manage them.

In particular, biotic constraints include rice pests and diseases, and a recent study (Savary et al, 2019) estimated the global rice yield losses due to pathogens and pests to 30% worldwide. Major rice diseases are caused by fungi (rice blast and brown spot), viruses (mostly yellow mottle disease), bacteria (bacterial leaf blight, bacterial leaf streak, bacterial panicle blight) and root-knot nematodes. Controlling these diseases involves the use of resistant cultivars, the recommendation of sustainable agricultural practices, biocontrol measures (including beneficial micro-organisms that may be inoculated to the soil to improve rice resistance). Controlling insect pests requires an integrated management including suitable use of chemicals and sustainable agricultural practices.

Emerging crop diseases are increasingly important, leading the United Nations General Assembly to declare 2020 as the International Year of Plant Health (IYPH 2020). Unfortunately, the covid pandemics somehow overshadowed IYPH; but it also highlights how global change increases the capacity of pathogens and pests to colonize the entire world rapidly. We have to control new pest by developing more efficient national, regional and global policies, structures and mechanisms.

Finally, important abiotic constraints reducing rice production are mostly drought, iron toxicity, salinity, high and low temperatures, and UV radiations. Growing rice with tolerance to these abiotic stresses is a major challenge, particularly in the current context of global change.

Among the research units involved in the topic ‘Rice and One Health’ are PHIM, AIDA, AGAP, DIADE, GRED, ECO&SOLS, …