Cloud seeding involves spraying particles such as silver iodide and salt into clouds from aircraft to produce rainfall.

Malaysia is resorting to cloud seeding to bring much-needed rain to the country's "rice bowl" north, where a drought has delayed planting of the staple crop and raised supply fears.

"This year... has been affected by prolonged dry weather, low rainfall and reduced dam water levels," the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security of Malaysia, Mohamad Sabu, told AFP.

The conditions mean farmers have missed two of the three usual planting phases for so-called "wet direct seeding" of rice, a technique that requires fields to be flooded.…