ABSTRACT
Flooding of native and agricultural lands is a major problem on Earth. On the whole world scale, the land area exposed to ooding is more than 17 million km2 annually. Dramatic oods occur in all continents of our planet and result in an estimated damage of more than U.S. $80 billion annually (Global Register of Major Flood Events; www.dartmouth.edu/∼oods/Archives/2005sum.htm). Furthermore, it has been predicted that the global climate change will lead into an increase in the frequency and in the severity of ooding events (Arnell and Liu 2001). Floods are changing the natural patterns of plant distribution and biodiversity (Silvertown et al. 1999), and as most of our food crop species (including some rice cultivars) are intolerant of ooding, waterlogging has a devastating impact on global food production (Normile 2008).
