Outside of Asia, Madagascar has the longest tradition of rice production, and this crop is grown in almost all districts of the country. For the Malagasy people, rice is an important part of their diet: many families eat it three times a day, and most of it is homegrown. In Madagascar, however, people earn less than $1.90 per day on average, and the Malagasy population is severely affected by food shortages. Domestic (国内的) production of rice, for example, still does not meet the needs of the island, and the country has to rely heavily on imported rice to help ensure the nation has enough food.

Madagascar has set itself the goal of being rice self-sufficient. To work towards this, an FAO South-South Cooperation project began between China and Madagascar. Chinese experts on rice production came to Madagascar to provide training to farmers on how to grow and harvest a greater-yielding (更高产的) type of rice.

The new kind of rice seeds is better suited to the Malagasy subtropical climate, which consists of a hot and rainy season between November and the end of March and a cooler dry season from May to October. This Weichu rice variety has been especially developed to fit the climatic and soil conditions of Madagascar.

Across three areas of the island, 124 rice farmers took part in the project, working together with a Chinese expert team, to benefit from both theoretical and field training on rice production. To date, the harvest has yielded about 8.45 tonnes on average per hectare (公顷) compared to the 2.8 tonnes per hectare that was harvested before the project. Alain Randrianarivelo, who has farmed rice for more than 20 years, says,“I think this new variety of rice is the future of our agriculture. The yield obtained is breathtaking.”All the other participating farmers think so, too.

For Madagascar as a country, this new variety will allow it to be self-sufficient by considerably reducing the level of rice imports.

Imagine that you are in a remote village somewhere with no medical clinic. 【小题1】 Once the doctors get to you, they examine you and take blood samples, but they won’t be able to help you until they take the samples back to the hospital to find out what is wrong. 【小题2】 Thanks to engineer Andy Ozcan, many people may never be in this situation. He has invented an app that turns your mobile phone into a diagnostic (诊断的) tool.

Ozcan’s invention is important because it is very accurate and easy to use. In many remote places, even if doctors have microscopes and other instruments to help them make diagnoses, there may still be other problems. Many doctors, for example, don’t have enough training to correctly interpret what they see. 【小题3】 With Ozcan’s mobile phone app, health workers can take a special photo of a blood sample and send it to a central computer at a hospital. The computer will then automatically interpret the photo and send a diagnosis back in a few minutes.

【小题4】 His technology only requires a mobile phone and an Internet connection. As more than four billion people already have mobile phones, the cost of establishing the diagnostic system is fairly low.

By inventing a medical tool that uses existing technology—mobile phones, Ozcan has developed a medical tool that is both practical and economical. Therefore, it can be used effectively almost anywhere. 【小题5】

When micro-plastics end up in farm fields, the pollution can damage plant growth. But two young researchers now report that combining fungi (真菌) with certain farm wastes can partly overcome that problem.

May Shin, 20, and Jiwon Choi, 18, met in a research design class at the Fryeburg Academy, a high school in Maine. May had desired to explore how micro-plastics might affect the ecosystem. Jiwon was crazy about plants and fungi. The young scientists cooperated to test how long-lived plastics might affect farm crops.

Scientists have shown certain fungi can aid root growth and a plant’s nutrient uptake. Those organisms are named arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). Certain farm wastes, like straw, can provide nutrients to plants and help stabilize their roots. Such wastes are also known as mushroom substrate (基质) and people often grow mushrooms in them.

May and Jiwon planted over 2,000 scallion (大葱) seeds in pots of soil. Half the seeds got soil polluted with micro-plastics. The rest grew in plastic-free soil. The plants then were further divided into four groups. The young scientists added AMF to the soil in one group. Another group had a top layer of mushroom substrate. A third group got both treatments. The last group got none. For three weeks, the pair tracked how many scallions sprouted (发芽) in each group and measured the plants’ height once each week.

About twice as many scallions sprouted in clean soil compared to that containing plastic bits. But among plants surviving in the polluted soil, a combination of AMF and mushroom substrate helped them out. Those getting both treatments grew 5.4 centimeters per week. That was faster than either of the treatments alone or those getting none.

Jiwon and May then looked at the plant roots with a microscope. Where AMF had been added, it grew into those roots. That increased the scallion roots’ surface area, May said, which should promote their uptake of nutrients. So “I see this project as coming up with a sustainable solution for plant growth in polluted soils,” said May.