Rice rhizobiome engineering for climate change mitigation

The year 2023 was the warmest year since 1850. Greenhouse gases, including CO2 and methane, played a significant role in increasing global warming. Among these gases, methane has a 25-fold greater impact on global warming than CO2. Methane is emitted during rice cultivation by a group of rice rhizosphere microbes, termed methanogens, in low oxygen (hypoxic) conditions. To reduce methane emissions, it is crucial to decrease the methane production capacity of methanogens through water and fertilizer management, breeding of new rice cultivars, regulating root exudation, and manipulating rhizosphere microbiota. In this opinion article we review the recent developments in hypoxia ecology and methane emission mitigation and propose potential solutions based on the manipulation of microbiota and methanogens for the mitigation of methane emissions.