Thursday, September 16, 2010

Indian farmers rapidly adopt flood-tolerant rice

Seed Daily: Farmers cultivating rice on 12 million hectares of flood-prone areas in India are planting flood-tolerant rice varieties at unprecedented rates, thanks to faster seed multiplication, targeted dissemination, and linking of partners.

Dr. Umesh Singh, senior scientist at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), said, "Earlier, we only provided and field-tested IRRI rice lines that were tolerant of flooding. Now, we assist government agencies and private seed companies to multiply and distribute seeds to farmers at a faster pace. " Field-testing a rice variety normally takes 4-5 years before it is released and another 2-3 years before it reaches farmers. Through targeted dissemination, IRRI is helping state governments identify specific flood-prone areas where seeds of the submergence-tolerant variety can be distributed, without having to wait until it is multiplied and distributed en masse.

IRRI, celebrating its 50th year of conducting rice research, has been working with India's national and state governments, nonprofit organizations, farmers' organizations, research institutions, and public and private seed companies to promote Swarna-Sub1, a flood-tolerant version of the widely grown Swarna variety….

A rice field in Nemmara village, Kerala, India, shot by Kjrajesh, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

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