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Science 12 August 2005:
Vol. 309. no. 5737, p. 985
DOI: 10.1126/science.309.5737.985i
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This Week in Science

Rice agriculture is possibly the biggest source of anthropogenic methane: Rice paddies cover about 130 million hectares of the earth's surface, of which almost 90% are in Asia, and emit 50 to 100 million metric tons of methane a year. Most of this methane is derived from rice photosynthates excreted into the rhizosphere. Lu and Conrad (p. 1088) used pulse-labeling of rice plants with 13CO2 followed by in situ stable isotope probing of rhizospheric archaeal RNA to show that a group of methanogenic archaea, the so-called Rice Cluster I, of which no isolates exist so far, is responsible for this methane production from the degradation of photosynthates.




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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)