Two out of every three people in India eat rice every single day. It is not a side dish here — it is the backbone of a nation’s diet. Now, a new study says that the backbone is more fragile than anyone thought.
6.6 per cent — that’s how much of India’s rice yield could vanish for every single degree Celsius the planet heats up. And here’s the part that should worry scientists — it’s more than three times higher than what earlier models predicted.
So, what changed? Researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research didn’t just run computer simulations. They went to 214 real rice fields around the world, measured what actually happened when temperatures rose, and compared it to seven of the top crop models used today. The models were off — by half. They predicted a 3.8 per cent loss. The real fields showed 8.1 per cent.
The reason comes down to one number: 30 degrees Celsius. Cross that threshold — especially while rice is flowering and forming grain — and the damage compounds fast.