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Source: Partnerships - Quarterly newsletter of the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF)
http://www.aatf-africa.org/UserFiles/File/PartnershipsNewsletter_2_April-June09.pdf

Global rice prices have increased sharply over the past few years, largely due to increasing demand from countries in Africa, the largest importer of the cereal.

Rice is now a commodity of strategic significance and the fastest-growing food source in Africa, where it has been cultivated for centuries. It is now grown and consumed in more than 40 countries on the continent. In several African states, rice availability and rice prices have become a major determinant of the welfare of the poorest segments of consumers who are least food secure. Rice is therefore on the front line in the fight against hunger and poverty in SSA.

Rice consumption in Africa is growing by 6 percent a year and has created an annual shortage of 6.5 million metric tonnes, which is imported at an annual cost of about $1.7 billion. Given the global food price crisis and competing demand in the traditional rice source markets in Asia, imports at such a large scale are not sustainable and Africa must look within for ways to improve rice production. The key lies partly in strategies to address constraints facing smallholder farmers, including research and introduction of new technologies.

Overcoming nutrient deficiency

A new project by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation aims to deploy biotechnology to help Africa’s rice farmers overcome the problem of soil nutrient depletion, one of the major causes of declining food production on the continent.

The Nitrogen-Use Efficient and Salt-Tolerant (NUEST) rice project aims to develop rice varieties for saline soils and those that lack sufficient nitrogen, a critical nutrient for plant growth.

Soil nitrogen depletion has been identified as a root cause of falling food yields in Africa. In west Africa, for instance, nitrogen deficiency is a leading constraint to rice productivity in 87% of rice lands.

The magnitude of nitrogen deficiency is so massive that it cannot simply be corrected by large additions of nitrogen-bearing fertiliser. Furthermore, most small-scale farmers cannot afford such chemical fertilisers. Thus the increasing need to reduce pollution from N fertilisers is concomitant to strengthening the importance of developing rice varieties that can use available nitrogen more efficiently.

 

A woman harvests rice: Africa relies heavily on imported rice to meet rising demand for the cereal. The new project will deploy biotechnology to breed nitrogen efficient and salt-tolerant rice for Africa.

Salination of soils, on the other hand, partly due to over-irrigation, is an equally big constraint to agricultural production. Fresh water is a precious and scarce commodity and the ability to irrigate crops with salty water can improve productivity, reduce irrigation costs, and make more fresh water available for human consumption. Crops need to be adapted to grow in large areas degraded by salt accumulation. Salt tolerance has been enhanced in rice, tomato, alfalfa, canola and cotton. This technology gives the opportunity to increase yield in salty conditions and to reduce the use of fresh water for irrigation which provides potential for mangrove rice.

In the new project, AATF will use a multi-pronged approach that focuses on developing and cultivating stress tolerant crops, improving their nutrient use efficiency and working with farmers to integrate these crops into farms.

The Foundation has entered into an agreement with Arcadia Biosciences and the Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture (PIPRA), in which the US-based agricultural biotechnology entities will provide their expertise and technology royalty-free for the development of nitrogen-use efficient and salt-tolerant African rice varieties.

The project also brings into collaboration agricultural research institutes in several African countries, which will provide technical expertise and locally adapted rice varieties into which scientists will build salt-tolerant and nitrogen use efficiency traits.

Working with national extension systems, AATF will then test the new rice varieties to pick those most preferred by farmers for dissemination across Sub-Saharan Africa.
 
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