Memphis, Tennessee, USA
October 1, 2015
There are some exciting Clearfield varieties in the pipeline that will offer farmers performance advantages heading into next season. Each of the new varieties has its own attributes, but all of them are an improvement on grain quality, making them more desirable to the marketplace.
CL163, our newest release, was in seed production this year and will be widely available in 2016. CL163 was developed as an improvement upon the high amylose varieties currently being grown. In short, amylose is a starch in rice that doesn't gel when cooked. So the higher the amylose content the less sticky the rice is when cooked. The grains remain separate after the rice cools. Our typical long grain rice varieties grown in the Mid-South have amylose content in the 20% to 22% range. CL163 has an amylose content of about 26%, which makes this variety ideal for parboiling, canning, food service and even packaged rice.
This is also a desirable attribute in many of our export countries in Central and South America. Many of the people in these countries prefer to cook a large pot of rice and use the cooked rice for several meals or days. They prefer the rice to stay separated and not clump together. Although Identity Preservation of CL163 will help to capture the advantages of its cooking quality, it can be comingled with current long-grain varieties without causing a problem.
Because CL163 was in seed production this year, we will have "field experiences" to compile in the coming weeks so that we can provide farmers the best management practices by growing area. Among the positive attributes we've already mentioned, early indications suggest CL163 provided stable yield performance in a year where stability was not common.
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