A pioneering farming experiment in drought-stricken Chile may have just cracked one of agriculture’s biggest challenges: growing rice with less water.

In a first-of-its-kind trial, researchers at Chile’s Austral University and local farmers have successfully cultivated rice using a technique called “Jaspe” straining, without flooding the fields.

The Jaspe strain consists of “spacing the seedlings further apart in enriched soil, and watering only sporadically to build a more resilient root system,” according to an article by Phys.org.

Read more in Yahoo! News here.

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