Los Baños, Philippines
May 6, 2008
IRRI'S NEW MIRACLES: AEROBIC,
SUBMARINE RICE
By Fernando del Mundo
Source:
Philippine Daily Inquirer via
SEAMEO SEARCA
The miracle workers who sparked the Green Revolution of the
1960s in Asia are in the final stages of developing their next
wonder -- rice varieties that can survive flooding, salinity and
drought.
And the first to get a crack at the new rice hybrids will be the
Philippines, says Robert Zeigler, director general of the
International Rice Research
Institute (IRRI) headquartered in Los Baños, Laguna.
"The submergence-tolerant materials are just coming out. They
haven't been released anywhere. They're just on the point of
being ready for farmers now. Salinity, same way. And the
Philippines will be the first to adopt this," says Zeigler.
"Drought is a tougher nut to crack, but again, we're doing work
on that," he says.
The Philippine Rice
Research Institute, or PhilRice, will receive the new breeds
for propagation in the country. PhilRice is IRRI's local partner
in the country, implementing the breakthroughs in research in
the IRRI fields and laboratories.
"PhilRice takes the stuff up very quickly. It will get them up
to the farmers," says Zeigler, whose agency produced the miracle
rice seeds of the 1960s using the magic of genetic engineering,
fertilizers and IRRIgation.
IRRI experts say rice prices have risen close to historical
levels since 2005 because population growth has outpaced the
dramatic yield growth produced by scientific breakthroughs.
" Since rice is the food of the world's poor, any increase in
the price of rice has a serious impact on those poor," says
Zeigler.
"There is no question that we need technologies that will
improve the productivity of rice and certainly hybrid rice is at
or near the top of the list of technologies," he says.
Pioneered by China, the world's top rice producer and consumer,
hybrids are bred by crossing genetically different varieties to
produce a rice plant that grows faster and produces yields of up
to 20 percent higher.
The downside is that farmers need to buy new seeds to plant
every year, which raises costs, because seeds saved from the
previous hybrid crop have inconsistent yields. Traditional rice
varieties by contrast are self-pollinating, so the seeds from
each harvest can be used again in the next planting season.
With several dozen storms hitting the Philippines each year, the
introduction of rice varieties that can withstand flooding and
other adverse conditions could prove promising.
"Rice grows in standing water, but if it gets completely
covered, like any other crop, it drowns and dies in three or
four days," says Zeigler.
"We have developed, based on material in our gene bank, a line
that would tolerate submergence for 17 days, completely under
water. You drain it, looks like it's dead as a doornail, but it
comes back. Other varieties don't," he says.
"Unfortunately, very poor yield, very poor grain quality, very
long duration, and so we have to do a lot of basic research on
the genetics and the physiology of it to identify where the gene
was that conferred the tolerance to submergence and to flooding.
"Then using molecular tools, not GMO (genetically modified
organism) but biotech tools, we move that gene into what we call
background to the most popular variety that farmers would grow,
that is, that are high yielding, that have good grain quality
and grown in an acceptable period to the farmers, not too long a
duration.
" We did that in record time," says Zeigler.
These new rice varieties are now in the final stages of
evaluation in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia
and India, and Zeigler says he expects that they will be
released straight away.
One new rice variety, which Zeigler calls the "sub1" for
submarine, is wedded to the IR 64, the world's most popular
hybrid.
Another variety that can be grown in the mountainous areas of
the Philippines is the so-called "aerobic rice." This can be
planted in soils managed under a system requiring little water
but can yield 4 to 6 metric tons per hectare. This variety is
already being planted in China using only 50 percent of the
water used in IRRIgated lowlands.
The aerobic rice could well be a savior in South Asia where it
has been estimated that, by 2012, 12 million hectares of
IRRIgated rice may suffer from severe water shortage, seriously
affecting the region's food security and social stability.
Still another variety being tested for commercial development is
one that can resist salinity in paddies close to the sea, under
threat of tsunamis or rising sea levels like the coastal regions
of Bangladesh.
IRRI has more than 100,000 rice seeds in its gene bank in Los
Baños, allowing scientists to conduct experiments. Thanks to the
bank, Cambodia was able to revive its traditional rice variety
that was practically obliterated during the Khmer Rouge's
genocidal regime that spawned massive starvation in the country
in the 1970s.
"Our No. 1 challenge is to get the information to the farmers
that there's a breakthrough," says Zeigler.
"This is not just in the Philippines. This is something we see
over and over again. We still haven't been able to get the
communication from the research and translate it as effectively
as we should get it to the farmers. We get over that hump and we
get another one or two tons per hectare," he says.
"It's just a question of getting information to the farmers in a
way that they can understand and use and it's not just
information but also the seeds."
Zeigler dismisses claims, mainly by those advocating organic
farming led by leftist and peasant groups, that IRRI is simply a
tool of multinational companies selling chemicals and that
massive use of fertilizers and pesticides would poison the soil.
"Ask yourself this: If your plant is removing potassium, or
phosphorous or nitrogen from the soil—I mean, you harvest it,
you eat it, you take it away from the soil and you keep doing
that, you don't put anything back—what's going to happen to the
soil? You keep taking away money from the bank, you don't put
anything in, what happens? It's gone," he says.
"If you want to sustain your agricultural system, you have to
replace the nutrients that you take out. Now, how do you replace
the nutrients? In the vast majority of cases, it doesn't matter.
"A plant can't tell the difference between the nitrogen atom or
a nitrate molecule or ammonium molecule that comes from
decomposing cattle manure or chicken manure or a bag of urea.
Plants can't tell. Nitrogen is nitrogen. It's completely
irrelevant where it comes from," Zeigler says.
Of course, if you put excessive amounts of fertilizer in the
field, it can damage the soil. It can run off, and pollute the
ground water and streams.
"But fertilizers that are managed in a way that only the amount
of crop needs is put on is very beneficial for the environment,"
says Zeigler.
"It's one of the technologies that we need to get up to the
farmers. We've worked on that a lot. We've taken very
sophisticated principles and scientific knowledge that we
generated 10 or 15 years ago and translated it down in ways that
farmers can use it. So the idea that adding fertilizer to the
fields will poison them is totally irresponsible," he says.
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