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March 17, 2008
by Esther Tola,
SciDev.Net
The African component of a research initiative aiming to provide
smallholder farmers with new rice varieties has been launched in
Benin.
The project, led by the Philippines-based
International Rice Research
Institute (IRRI) and the
Africa Rice Center, was launched at a meeting at the Africa
Rice Center laboratories in Cotonou, Benin, earlier this month
(5–8 March).
It is part of a larger scheme for IRRI, funded by the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, to improve rice varieties in Africa
and Asia (see Gates Foundation boost for climate-hardy rice).
The project aims to provide smallholder farmers who rely on
rain-fed agriculture — and are therefore vulnerable to drought,
flooding and high salinity — with improved rice varieties and
farm management practices to increase yields by 50 per cent over
the next ten years.
"In these regions, farmers are always getting yields which are
only one or two tons per hectare, when normally they could get
up to five tons per hectare or even more," plant breeder
Baboucarr Manneh of the Biotechnology Unit at the Africa Rice
Center, told SciDev.Net.
"The idea is to develop rice varieties, distribute the seeds of
these varieties and make sure they're available to all farmers."
Work will be carried out in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia,
Ghana, Mali, Nigeria and Tanzania to design rice varieties
best-suited to each country.
"We need to work with each country's national and agricultural
research systems to develop varieties and test them with the
farmers," Manneh told SciDev.Net.
Some stress-tolerant rice breeds are already being tested. "A
breed which tolerates completely submerged conditions for up to
two weeks was found in a traditional rice variety in India,"
explains plant breeder David Mackill from IRRI. "We were able to
transfer this gene from the traditional variety."
Other news
from the African
Rice Center |
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