March 18, 2009
by Esther Tola, SciDev.Net
Agricultural researchers in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea and
Nigeria and are preparing field tests on some 80 varieties of
rice designed to survive — and even thrive — in the iron-rich
soils of West Africa.
Beginning in May, studies in three regions of each country will
test the plants’ abilities to tolerate levels of iron that would
kill most high-yielding rice, said Senegalese molecular
biologist Khady Nani Dramé, from the African Rice Centre in
Benin.
Local farmers are participating in the trials, which will be
directed by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
in Ghana, Guinea's Agronomic Research Institute, the National
Cereals Research Institute in Nigeria and the Environment and
Agricultural Research Institutte in Burkina Faso
"Once each of the institutes has planted the varieties, the
farmers from each site will be invited to select the five best
varieties and the five worst," Dramé told SciDev.Net.
Ten high-performing varieties will then be sent to the farmers,
who will use their own traditional tilling techniques to see if
the iron-tolerant rice gives better results than the breeds they
normally use.
Until now, only low-yielding rice has survived in such iron-rich
soil.
"That's why we first need to find the varieties tolerant to iron
toxicity and then create new ones by breeding these tolerant
varieties with high-yielding varieties — so that we can get
stress-tolerant rice with a good yield," explained Dramé.
Her team has already narrowed down the potential candidates in
field tests on 300 different rice strains.
Plant breeder Alhassan Maji, from Nigeria's National Cereals
Research Institute explained he would be investigating the level
of iron in the test rice's leaves, the height of the rice plants
and the amount of grain produced
The first results will be ready by December 2009, he said.
The research is part of the Stress Tolerant Rice for Africa and
South Asia (STRASA) project, run in collaboration with the
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). The project also
designs plants which can survive drought, salty water and cold. |
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