As a result, wheat prices elsewhere more than doubled, pulling rice and corn prices up with them.

"You suspended Ray rice after our video," a reporter from TMZ challenged National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell the other day.

Add a lunch of chicken, rice and broccoli (西蘭花), and you are already over the recommended 50 grams.

As an EU-funded effort, the search for salt-tolerant varieties of rice is taking place in all three countries.

As the sea creeps into these fresh—water marshes, however, rising salinity (鹽分) is hampering rice production.

At the same time, this sea-water also kills off the greedy giant apple snail, an introduced pest that feeds on young rice plants.

Each team is crossbreeding a local European short-grain rice with a long-grain Asian variety that carries the salt-resistant gene.

Located on the Mediterranean just two hours south of Barcelona, the Ebro Delta produces 120 million kilograms of rice a year, making it one of the continent's most important rice-growing areas.

Over the next year and a half investigators will test the various strains of salt-tolerant rice they've bred.

Scientists working under the banner "Project Neurice" are seeking varieties of rice that can with-stand the increasing salinity without losing the absorbency that makes European rice ideal for traditional Spanish and Italian dishes.

The Ebro Delta, in Spain, famous as a battleground during the Spanish civil War, is now the setting for a different contest, one that is pitting rice farmers against two enemies: the rice-eating giant apple snail, and rising sea levels.

The scientists are breeding successive generations to arrive at varieties that incorporate salt tolerance but retain about 97 percent of the European rice genome.