Scientists say a key to alleviating food shortages in Africa may be an indigenous rice, largely abandoned in favor of Asian varieties, that is uniquely able to withstand the continent’s difficult growing conditions.
Even on its home continent, African rice has fallen out of favor, as farmers chose Asian varieties that tend to have higher yields.
Scientists have long seen the African grain as only a gene pool. They plucked the traits they liked and grafted them onto Asian strains to create hardier lines.
However, researchers now say they are giving “elite status” to the African grain, while improving it with genes from Asian varieties.
The result, called New Rice for Africa, may be uniquely poised to reduce Africa’s reliance on rice imports, according to the Africa Rice Center, which developed the new strains.
By starting with African rice, “we preserve the maximum amount of diversity that can help solve the maximum amount of problems,” Semon Mande, a scientist with the center, said on Friday.
Though it still lags behind other grains, rice is the fastest growing staple on the continent, according to the center. Yet Africa imports 40 percent of its rice at a cost of about US$3.6 billion in 2008.
It was long assumed that the yields of African rice, which tend to be far lower than Asian varieties, could not be sufficiently improved. So though the grain was better suited to its indigenous continent — better able to adapt to different dry conditions, innately resistant to pests — Asian rice is more widely planted.
However, Mande says between 50 percent and 60 percent of farmers who have come to test fields set up by scientists — which are planted with a variety of strains — choose the engineered strains because they see how well they grow.
The problem now, Mande says, is how to make the new strains of rice more available to farmers throughout the continent.
The center is working with national governments’ agricultural systems and has also set up task forces in more than 20 countries, including Congo, Ethiopia, Madagascar and Uganda, to draw in farmers.
Michael Lipton, professor of economics at England’s University of Sussex, said the improved varieties that cross Asian and African rice are “promising” in fields planted by researchers.
He cautioned that success in farmers’ fields would be difficult to measure because there is usually no organized system, as in Asia, for measuring production by small farmers.
Lipton added that there were other ways of increasing rice yields, such as improving the control of water in paddies.
Mande says the reintroduction of African rice is important because it is diversifying the variety, which had stagnated after falling out of favor.
Greater diversity in the strains results in a more successful crop.
“We try to accumulate as much good traits [in the new strains], so they can keep on solving the problems that arise,” he said.
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