CUTTACK: With climate change beginning to haunt rice cultivation in the country in a big way, focus has now shifted to developing varieties that would withstand the stress factors.
Scientists and researchers have got on the job of developing varieties that would be tolerant to stress situations like heat, drought, flood, submergence and salinity induced by climate change.
Rice varieties have been developed with specific tolerance to drought, submergence or salinity. But now the thrust is on breeding rice varieties with multiple characters to withstand the host of stresses induced by climate change.
“We are beginning to see the effects of prolonged dry spell followed by heavy rains that cause long duration submergence.
And with intense work commencing we can expect development of rice strains resistant to multiple stress in the next few years,” Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI) Director Dr TK Adhya said.
The issue of concern, however, is lack of proper extension of rice varieties and technologies that have been developed for different stress conditions to the doorsteps of the farmers.
There are at least four or five droughtresistant varieties along with three or four suitable for submerged conditions.
Yet, more than 75 per cent of the farmers are unaware of developing technologies and continue to suffer immense loss by persisting with traditional breeds and technologies. There is an urgent need to popularise and spread the already developed stresstolerant rice varieties where farming is exposed to different manifestations of climate change.
This forms the major recommendation of the national conference on “Sustainable Rice Production System Under Changed Climate,” organised by Association of Rice Research Workers (ARRW) and ICAR at the Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI) here. The recommendations drawn by policymakers, scientists, researchers, farmers and field-level agriculture workers would be submitted to the Director- General of Crops under ICAR.
Rice is the staple diet for the bulk of the population in the country. Grown over 44.6 million hectare in India and 44.7 lakh hectare in Orissa, rice production is around 100 million tonne now but has to be raised to at least 130 million tonne by 2025 which is quite a huge ask.