Indian scientists to come out with drought-resistant rice variety in a year

Variety to help farmers tide over floods and droughts both

Farmers of drought-prone areas will get new rice seeds to help them out, like their peers in flood-affected parts received four years back.

After launching the country's first-ever water submergence resistant rice variety called ‘Suvarna Sub - 1’ in 2009, the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) along with Manila-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is planning to come out with its upgraded version which will have drought-resistant qualities as well in the next one-year.

The new variety will not only enable farmers to tide over long water submergence in flood prone areas of the country, but will also be of equal help to them in areas where recurring droughts damage standing paddy crops.

“The new drought-resistant varieties of paddy will be available to farmers from next year,” Uma Shanker Singh, senior scientist and South Asia Regional Project Coordinator of IRRI said.

The variety will be a higher version of existing 'suvarna sub 1' with more added features.

He said such has been popularity of water-submergence resistant ‘Suvarna Sub 1’ rice seed varieties that IRRI has released the India-developed seed in six other countries which include Bangladesh, Nepal, Cambodia and Myanmar.

The ‘Suvarna Sub- 1’, named after gold (maybe because of value it adds to agriculture), was released in 2009 in India and has become one of most sought after seed varieties in the region over a period of three years.

 
“Till 2012 around 1 million hectares of land used these seeds mostly in the eastern Indian states of West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and Assam, making it perhaps one of the fastest growing rice seeds,” Singh said.

In total, rice is cultivated in around 44 million hectares of land every year, of which almost 40% is in the five eastern Indian states.

Suvarna as a rice seed variety has been quite popular in India for many years mainly in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. IRRI, ICAR and CRRI incorporated submergence resistant properties in the traditional varieties and made a new seed which was readily accepted by farmers.

“Suvarna in itself was quite a popular variety, hence there was no problem of acceptability by farmers,” Singh said.

He said the seed is being sold not only by state seed corporations, but also private seed companies extensively.

Singh said gradually, drought and water submergence resistant properties will also be instilled in other popular rice varieties in India like sambha masuri, IR-64 etc.

“There is not much yield gain in suvarna and suvarna sub-1 verities, but the loss in output due to long-duration of submergence in water is less,” Singh said.

The suvarna sub 1 variety of paddy can withstand submergence under full water for up to 15 days and as the water recedes, new shoot again comes up which gives an average yield of around 3.5 tonne per hectare. For a farmer, who takes floods as being a sure-shot sign of complete loss, this variety has come as a boon.

It is not that this remarkable variety was developed overnight. It was after almost 10 years of extensive research that swarna sub 1 variety was developed.

In India, only 47% of net sown area of around 141 million hectares is rain fed. This is more in eastern parts of the country, where the total rainfed is around 52% of the sown area.

Officials said that of 266 lakh hectares of agricultural land in eastern India, almost 50.2 lakh hectares is submergence-prone and are regularly impacted by floods. It is for the farmers of these areas that swarna sub 1 is a god send variety.

 
India’s Annual Rice Production (in million tonnes)

Year	Production
2012-13	104.40
2011-12	105.30
2010-11	95.98
2009-10	89.09
2008-09	99.18

Note: Rice is cultivated both during the kharif and rabi sowing season. But more than 80% of the crop is harvested in kharif season.

Source: Department of Agriculture