Greenhouse gas emission from rice fields: a review from Indian context

Agricultural soil acts as a source and sink of important greenhouse gases (GHGs) like methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), and carbon dioxide (CO₂). Rice paddies have been a major concern to scientific community, because they produce the threatening and long-lasting GHGs mainly CH₄ and N₂O. Around 30% and 11% of global agricultural CH₄ and N₂O, respectively, emitted from rice fields. Thus, it is urgent to concurrently quantify the fluxes of CH₄ and N₂O to improve understanding of both the gases from rice fields and to develop mitigation strategies for upcoming climate change reduction. An effort is being made in this review to discuss exclusively the emission of CH₄ and N₂O under normal and controlled conditions in different locations of India and also addresses the current synthesis of available data on how field and crop management activities influence CH₄ and N₂O emissions in rice fields. Making changes to conventional crop management regimes could have a significant impact on reducing GHG emissions from rice field. Environmental and agricultural factors related to soil could be easily altered by management practices. So, knowing the mechanism of CH₄ and N₂O production and release in the rice field and factors controlling the emissions is fundamental to develop well-organized strategies to reduce emissions from rice cultivated soil. This will help the regulatory bodies or policy makers to formulate adequate policies for agricultural farmers to refine the GHG emissions as well as minimize the global climate change.