Trial of drought-tolerant African rice
The news item by Mr. Sohel published in your daily on 24 April 2012 about the field trial of 'Nerica', a WARDA-developed African rice variety, says it is a commendable step for boosting rice production in the Aus season of Bangladesh. Among the rice growing seasons, Aus is the most vulnerable one and offers low yield per unit of land. The Aus crop faces drought problem at the beginning but may face flash flood at the flowering time. Most of our traditional Aus varieties possess quite a good grade of resistance to both the problems. But their yield is not satisfactory. That is why farmers are switching over to grow Boro crop in some Aus fields wherever irrigation facilities are available. Another problem is the attack of pests and diseases at the ripening stage, when the field is very humid.
So, it is quite logical that we have to develop/introduce drought and pest tolerant high yielding Aus varieties. BRRI at Gazipur has tried to develop such varieties using the local germplasm as source of drought, flash flood and pest tolerant genes. Some of them like BR3 and Chandina are already under cultivation. In the past, BRRI also introduced some African rice varieties. But many of them succumbed to the attack of local pests and diseases.
Agricultural technology related to crop production/introduction has to be developed according to specific location suiting its agro-ecology including weather, climate, altitude, latitude, longitude etc. Most African fields for rice crops have quite low humidity compared to our highly humid Aus fields at the flowering stage. So, there is a chance that exotic varieties from Africa, like this Nerica, may face attack of pests and diseases under our conditions.
Therefore, it will be wise to try this Nerica under close supervision and guidance of the experienced BRRI scientists.
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