• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.133-144
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• 2022

This study was conducted to investigate the cultivation period, adaptive genetic resources, growth and development patterns, and water consumption for rice cultivation in the desert environment of United Arab Emirates (UAE). R esearch on rice cultivation in the desert environment is expected to contribute to resolving food shortages caused by climate change and water scarcity. It was found that the optimal cultivation period of rice was from late November to late April of the following year during which the low temperature occurred at the vegetative growth stage of rice in the UAE. Asemi and FL478 were selected to be candidate cultivars for temperature and day-length conditions in the desert areas as a result of pre-testing genetic resources under reclaimed soil and artificial meteorological conditions. In the desert environment in the UAE, FL478 died before harvest due to the etiolation and poor growth in the early stage of growth. In contrast, Asemi overcame the etiolation in the early stage of growth, which allowed for harvest. The vegetative growth phases of Asemi were from early December to early March of the following year whereas its reproductive growth and ripening phases were from early March to late March and from late March to late April, respectively. The yield of milled rice for Asemi was 763kg/10a in the UAE, which was about 41.8% higher than that in Korea. Such an outcome was likely due to the abundant solar radiation during the reproductive growth and grain filling periods. On the other hand, water consumption during the cultivation period in the UAE was 2,619 ton/10a, which was about three times higher than that in Korea. These results suggest that irrigation technology and development of cultivation methods would be needed to minimize water consumption, which would make it economically viable to grow rice in the UAE. In addition, select on of genetic resources for the UAE desert environments such as minimum etiolation in the early stages of growth would be merited further studies, which would promote stable rice cultivation in the arid conditions.