China's food security: advanced rice thrives in salt deserts of Xinjiang, where most flora dies.

China is heralding increased production of salt-tolerant rice as additional evidence that its food-security push has taken root on the rim of Xinjiang's desert, where the soil is so saline that most flora refuses to grow.

Beijing expects increased yields of genetically modified crops, particularly in isolated and rural areas where arable land is scarce, to contribute to a long-term solution to feeding the country's 1.4 billion people.

According to Xinhua, following an on-site inspection on Friday, an official survey group estimated the final yield of salt-tolerant rice in Aksu, in the inland Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, at the edge of the Taklimakan Desert in western China, to be 573.8kg (1,265 pounds) per mu, using a Chinese unit of area equal to 15 hectares, or 37 acres.

The yield per mu was about 150kg greater than the average production in salt-tolerant rice fields. It was unclear how long they had been producing rice in that area, although the assessed fields had just been recovered from fallow ground.