A Japanese research team has developed a new type of rice plant that is resistant to drought. The team includes researchers from laboratories including the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences and the RIKEN institute. <br/><br/>They removed genes that enhance tolerance of dry conditions from a plant called arabidopsis, and injected them into a popular rice plant in South America. The researchers observed the growth of the rice plants at a farm in Colombia for 3 years. <br/><br/>The treated plants yielded as much as 2.5 times more compared to before the treatment during the dry season from 2013 to 2014 when no rain fell for more than 1 month.