College Station, Texas
January 15, 2009
Texas rice isn’t all it’s cracked
up to be.
Delicious? No doubt.
Heavily consumed? Try 1.2 billion pounds this year.
Economically beneficial? Think more than $170 million worth to
the state this year.
But there’s bound to be more tied up in the tiny kernels,
Texas AgriLife
researchers think, so they pored over 50 years of data seeking
the next clue for improvement. Then they took it to the next
step -- planting 23 of the varieties developed since 1944 to see
how they might grow on today’s farm.
They found that their research predecessors combined selective
breeding techniques with on-farm growing methods to continuously
increase yield and quality of rices for Texas.
“These results demonstrate the significant progress that has
been achieved in rice breeding for the southern U.S. since
1944,” said Dr. Rodante Tabien in the December issue of
Crop Science Journal.
“Increase in rice production is generally associated to new
varieties, but that is just part of the production system. Other
technologies like fertilizer contributed to this increase in
production as well. Our study will help the new plant breeders
to learn how the pioneers did it, and the general public also
can appreciate the hard work of the breeders in increasing food
supply through the development of new cultivars.”
Tabien is the journal article's lead author and an AgriLife
Research rice breeder at Beaumont.
Rice had its start in Texas on about 175 acres in 1892. Early
growers depended on foreign seed to adapt to the Texas soils and
climate. By 1931, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had
established a program at AgriLife Research -- then called Texas
Agricultural Experiment Station -- at Beaumont to study the
science behind rice production.
In little more than 10 years, the article notes, the first new
variety, “Texas Patna,” was released to the farmers. The
researchers continued to develop other possibilities in the
breeding program, successfully launching “Bluebonnet” in 1944.
For the first 50 years, rice researchers released 26 varieties,
according to Dr. Anna McClung, who initiated the historic look
at the Texas rice breeding program. McClung, who is a scientist
with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Research
Service, looked both at the selection process for specific
traits and the use of fertilizer, which have an impact on yield
and quality.
For their comparative experiment, the researchers grew 23
varieties in three different environments and with two levels of
nitrogen fertilizer.
They found that over the years, each new variety was an
improvement from the previous release.
“The contribution of plant breeding is related to gains or
improvement in various traits such as high yield and better
resistance. The measured gains are clues to breeders on what
traits to focus and what gains could be expected,” Tabien said.
“If the gain is lower, the breeder may opt to look for ways to
obtain higher gain.”
One way to do that, he explained, is to consider what previous
plant breeders have studied on that trail, analyze what has been
done and then look for other options to improve the gains.
“If the gain is higher, the new challenge will be what else can
be done to increase it further. These will give hints and guide
new breeders in what to do, avoid or search to increase the
gains made by the previous breeders,” Tabien said.
Among the desirable traits for rice, Tabien explained, are the
number of days it takes a plant to “head” or get the rice
developing, the plant height, whole and total milled rice
percentages, and grain yield.
These traits are as important today as when the rice breeding
program began almost 80 years ago, he said, plus scientists are
considering new needs.
“Herbicide resistance is needed in rice for better weed control.
Seedling cold tolerance and heat tolerance during reproductive
stage will also be needed in the coming years,” Tabien said.
“Resistance to prevailing pests should be incorporated also in
new cultivars. Aside from the above traits, the traits on which
we are currently focusing are fast tiller and leaf production,
uniform flowering and nitrogen use efficiency.”
He said using wild rice strains to further increase grain yield
is another effort of the scientists.
Tabien said the data thus far examines only the varieties
released from 1944-1992.
The team had begun to examine varieties and promising entries
since 1993, he said, but the experiment was damaged by last
fall’s hurricane Ike. They plan to repeat the trial next year,
and Tabien expects data from that experiment to be complete by
2011. |
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