Two Areas of Hope Emerge in Rice Cultivation
As the global food crisis in the midst of a
worldwide economic collapse threatens the existence of millions
of poor across the world, two new developments in rice
cultivation have inserted fresh hope that the threat can be
beaten back. Developed in West Africa through the collaborative
backing of the Japanese government, UNDP, the African Development
Bank, the US Agency for International Development, the UN Food
and Agriculture Organization, and the Rockefeller Foundation,
NERICA, the "New Rice for Africa", protein-rich, weed-competitive
and pest- and disease-resistant, is a remarkable example of
Asian-African collaboration.
The basic idea was to combine the best traits of the Asian
and African rices. Vital to the effort were gene banks that
contain seeds of 1500 African rice varieties, which had faced
extinction as farmers abandoned them for higher yielding Asian
varieties. The initial experimental work at the West Africa Rice
Development Association (WARDA) has developed the rice into a
valued crop capable of increasing farmers' harvests by 50%. From
the seven pilot countries of Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia,
Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, and Togo, NERICA is being further
disseminated to East African countries such as Uganda, Rwanda and
Tanzania.
The second piece of good news in this area is the emergence
of the the Sub-1 flood-resistant gene rice. This variety would
help farmers produce six tons of rice per hectare under normal
conditions and around three tons if the paddy was submerged for
two weeks. In countries like Bangladesh, Myanmar, and parts of
India, where heavy monsoon rain often floods hundreds of
thousands of hectares, paddy fields remain submerged for days.
Normal varieties would only yield 1 ton or less if subject to
that sort of submergence. "The variety that has this gene still
performs as well as the original without submergence," said David
Mackill, program leader for rain-fed environments at the
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines,
adding: "It is like an insurance policy."
Farmers in India and Bangladesh will likely start commercial
production of Sub-1 flood-resistant gene rice next year, giving
them protection against crop losses from typhoons and heavy
monsoon rains. It is expected that the Myanmarese farmers, who
encounter similar natural calamities from time to time, would
also join in. "We now have a fairly big program in India and
Bangladesh to multiply the seed," said Meckill on May 27, adding:
"It would survive for about two weeks under water."
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