Monheim Germany
February 19, 2009
Source:
Bayer CropScience
About 120,000 varieties of rice
are grown all around the world
Rice is the staple diet of half the world's population. In some
Asian languages, the word "eating" is actually synonymous with
"eating rice". In Western cultures, however, these slender
grains are usually served as a side dish; wrongly so, as rice
contains valuable carbohydrates as well as vitamins and minerals
that are essential to life. But the popular grain is in crisis,
as climate change and pests are making life tough for rice
plants. And a growing global population needs ever-increasing
amounts of this precious foodstuff.
NUTRITION AND HEALTH
 |
|
Irrigated rice field in Indonesia. |
| |
 |
| Rice
plants at the stage of panicle development. |
| |
 |
|
Farmer working in a rice field in Indonesia. |
| |
 |
|
Landscape with rice terraces in the Philippines. |
| |
 |
Planting of rice seedlings from a seedlings box in
Japan.
Photos copyright
Bayer CropScience AG |
| |
Health-giving grains
Rice is good for you: whole-grain brown rice in particular
provides the body with vital nutrients. One of these is vitamin
B1, which helps our metabolism obtain energy from food and
strengthens the nerves. Rice is also rich in vitamin B6, used in
blood formation. The elongated grains also contain biotin,
another vitamin, which keeps our hair healthy and our nails
strong. In addition, they are packed with vitamins like
potassium and zinc, which not only help keep our blood pressure
healthy but also boost our immune system. And the proteins in
rice are particularly valuable since they contain all the
essential amino acids that are vital to life.
Rice is also low in calories and very low in fat. And one
particularly appealing property of rice is that we feel full for
longer after eating it because our body takes quite a long time
to process the carbohydrates it contains. Rice also contains
fiber, which aids digestion. It is perfect for people who are
ill as it does not lie heavy in the stomach. Its diuretic
properties help the body eliminate toxins from the body via the
kidneys. And one other beneficial feature: it is thought that
the protease inhibitors in rice can help prevent cancer.
Rice in all its forms
There are about 120,000 varieties of rice grown all around the
world. The main distinction is between short-grain and
long-grain rice. Brown rice, which still has its husk intact, is
particularly healthy. This husk contains many of the vitamins
and minerals in rice. White rice is more popular, but it has
been polished and so has lost the husk and these vital
nutrients. People who rely on polished rice are at risk of
beri-beri, a disease caused by vitamin B1 deficiency which can
lead to nerve paralysis and cardiovascular disorders.
The parboiling process has been in use since the early 1940s to
help retain valuable components even in white rice. This process
produces white parboiled rice which contains 80 per cent of the
nutrients that are contained in whole-grain rice.
ECONOMIC FACTORS
Helping rice out of a crisis
These tiny grains are the most important cereal in the world:
around 600 million tons of rice are harvested each year
throughout the world. But rice-growers are already finding it
hard to keep pace with consumption as it stands, let alone the
increase in demand that will follow the rapid rise in the global
population. Rice yields in Asia have been around four tons per
hectare since the mid-1990s – too little for too many people.
More than 780 million tons of rice would have to be produced
annually in order to safeguard the supply of food for the world
by 2020 – a 20 per cent rise on today's figures.
Another issue is the dramatic rise in food prices since 2003:
rice now costs four times as much as it did six years ago. The
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) expects rice
consumption to increase again in 2009. No improvement is in
sight: rising demand has forced many governments to make use of
reserve stocks to cope with the deficit. The world's stocks of
rice are now lower than they have ever been.
There was a global food crisis back in the 1970s, which led to
the formation of the International Rice Research Institute
(IRRI) based in the Philippines and research into breeding new
high-yielding varieties and improving farming methods. The
results were record harvests. We now need to build on this first
"green revolution".
A greater commitment to robust seeds
The IRRI recognized the problems now facing rice more than a
decade ago. Although the international community undertook to do
more for agriculture after the first global food crisis, the
will to take action waned as prices fell. "International
agricultural research has been neglected for years," criticizes
Professor Stefan Tangermann, former OECD Director for
Agriculture. "Now we wonder why agriculture cannot manage to
feed a hungry world." As increasing the acreage of land under
cultivation is scarcely an option, the challenge is to increase
yields and develop varieties that are better able to cope with
climatic influences. "Farming methods must be improved, and
these could boost yields per hectare by up to three tons in most
regions," explains Dr. Achim Dobermann, Director at the IRRI.
Efficient water management is vital too, as rice is the
thirstiest of all crops. It takes about 5,000 liters of water to
produce a kilogram of rice. Wheat, by comparison, is less
demanding, requiring only about 1,200 liters to produce the same
amount. The effects are worrying, as the water table in India is
falling by one and a half meters a year. "Better seed that is
resistant to pests and diseases is the most important
requirement," says Dr. Dobermann, "and another point is that 15
to 20 per cent of the harvest is lost worldwide in transport and
storage."
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Securing the world's food
supplies is one of the greatest challenges of our time
There are more of us than ever before on our planet: it is
estimated that by 2050 the world's population will reach nine
billion. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) estimates that agricultural production would need to
double in order to feed all these mouths. In the final report of
the conference on food security, bioenergy and climate change in
June 2008, it therefore called on "the international community,
including the private sector, to decisively step up investment
in science and technology for food and agriculture."
Comments Professor Stefan Tangermann, "More must be done to
increase agricultural productivity and thereby expand the supply
of food. This depends particularly on more research and
development, and a more open-minded attitude to the
opportunities offered by modern biotechnology." Research into
breeding and molecular biology therefore needs to be strongly
supported. Companies such as Bayer CropScience AG and public
bodies like the International Rice Research Institute have
joined forces to assist in the development of improved rice
varieties. The Hybrid Rice Research and Development Consortium
(HRDC), which was created as part of this move, has set itself
the task of increasing rice production in Asia and introducing
new breeding methods.
Resistant to flooding
Using biotechnology, scientists are able to transfer useful
genes from one rice variety to another. "For instance, we have
found a gene that makes rice resistant to flooding. This is
important for coastal areas that are repeatedly affected by to
this problem," comments Dr. Achim Dobermann, Director at the
IRRI. The genetic marker for this flood-tolerance was discovered
in a hybrid of two existing rice varieties. Many rice varieties
thrive when grown on flooded fields and terraces, but if they
are completely covered with water they can only survive for a
few days. Natural disasters like this are already threatening a
quarter of the land on which rice is cultivated, due mainly to
climate change. The new rice plant can survive for two weeks
entirely immersed in water. When the plant is submerged, a gene
is activated which stimulates cells to form proteins that adjust
the plant's metabolism to cope with the low-oxygen conditions
that prevail under water. Scientists are now working with genes
for salt resistance and tolerance to prolonged periods of
drought.
Identifying the right genes
Bayer CropScience is also working to develop new, high-yield
rice seed. The Arize® dhani variety is extremely resistant to
pests, environmental stress, saline soils and flooding.
Scientists developed the new variety using a technique called
hybrid breeding. This involves skilful hybridization to insert
resistance genes from naturally-occurring rice varieties into
the cultivated plant, resulting in a cross such as the hybrid
rice variety Arize® dhani. The additional gene from the
hybridization partner makes the new variety more resistant to
bacterial blight, one of the most serious global threats to rice
plants and the potential cause of drastic losses. It is caused
by the bacterium Xanthomonas oryzae.
Scientists working on breeding hybrid rice need parent plants
with a particular set of characteristics. They stop the rice
plant self-fertilizing, which it would normally do, and
deliberately transfer pollen from one plant to another,
producing hybrids that are stronger, more resistant to pests,
and more productive. The task of finding the desired properties
and breeding parent plants is time-consuming and expensive,
because it is important that the beneficial properties of
previous hybridization experiments such as higher yields are not
lost.
Hybrid rice has already proved successful in China, where an
area of 30 million hectares has produced 184 million tons of
rice. India, which has the same area of land under rice
cultivation, only produced 96 million tons. Bayer CropScience
opened a new research laboratory in Singapore in the summer of
2008 with the aim of further boosting the contribution of
high-yield rice to global rice production. This laboratory
concentrates on breeding rice varieties with very high yields
and special additional properties.
|
Additional information on rice |
A brief history of rice
Rice is an ancient crop. It is thought that the
first rice fields were plants in eastern Asia six
thousand years ago. Some experts even believe that
rice was being grown around ten thousand years ago.
Rice was first brought to Egypt from Persia about
300 A.D., but it was not until the time of Alexander
the Great that the cereal was seen in Europe,
initially in Greece, where it was given the name
"oryza". The Moors then imported rice plants to
Spain and Portugal around the ninth century.
Flooded terrace
The crop is grown mainly on flooded terraces in
Asia. This 'wet rice cultivation' method is very
labor-intensive. Chinese rice-growers use water
buffaloes rather than machines to plough their
fields. The water is allowed to drain away just
before harvest time. A mature rice plant looks like
an oat plant: the panicles, which fan out to a
length of 20 to 30 centimeters, contain the rice
grains.
The crop is quite tolerant of soil type, but does
need a lot of water and heat. Rice is the only
cereal that can withstand flooding. Rice grown by
this method is sometimes harvested from boats and
can yield between 7,000 and 10,000 kilograms per
hectare. But rice also grows well in marshy areas in
the high valleys of the Himalayas. In Africa and
Latin America the crop is grown on fields that are
not flooded, but yields are much lower than with the
wet-cultivation method, at only 1,500 to 4,000
kilograms per hectare.
Miracle rice from the USA
Henry Monroe Beachell achieved his breakthrough in
1966 with IR8. His International Rice Variety 8 was
the product of a cross between a Taiwanese and an
Indonesian variety. This miracle rice saved billions
of people from starvation in the 1970s. Breeding
work at the IRRI has reduced the stalk length of
this plant from one and a half meters to just under
a meter, enabling the panicles to bear twice as many
grains without collapsing. The grain ripens in 110
days instead of 160 days. Yields per hectare doubled
during this first "green revolution", as many
regions were able to produce an extra harvest every
year. Dr. Beachell, an agronomist born in Nebraska,
USA, in 1906, was awarded the World Food Prize
jointly with his former IRRI colleague from India,
Gurdev S. Khush, in 1996. |
LINKS
This German-language page on the website of the German Plant
Breeders' Association provides information about crossing
and selecting, hybridization and smart breeding.
http://www.bdp-online.de/de/Pflanzenzuechtung/Methoden/
Clicking on the “Pflanze” tab of this website of the
Agricultural Information Centre takes readers to information
in German about cultivation statistics, the biology of rice,
harmful pathogens and other details.
http://www.proplanta.de
The Rice Knowledge Bank pages of the International Rice
Research Institute (IRRI ) are a wealth of information about
rice - from seed to market.
http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org/Rice/Ricedefault.htm
To mark the International Year of Rice in 2004, the FAO
presented a rich resource of knowledge about rice and what
it means for our diet.
http://www.fao.org/rice2004/en/aboutrice.htm
The publications of the International Food Policy Research
Institute (IFPRI) explain the food and financial crises and
their consequences for poor populations.
http://beta.irri.org/solutions/images/publications/papers/ifpri_food_financial_crisis_dec2008.pdf
The magazine Rice Today, published by the International Rice
Research Institute (IRRI), looks at rice research, the food
situation and environmental protection around the world.
http://beta.irri.org/news/images/stories/ricetoday/8-1/RT_8-1_complete.pdf
|
|
