With rise in temperature due to climate change, agricultural scientists have called for speedy development of various stress resistance varieties of rice for sustaining production in future.
?Future farming and food systems will have to be better adapted to a range of a biotic and biotic stresses to cope with the direct and indirect consequences of a progressively changing climate,? TK Adhya, director, Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI) has noted in a paper titled ? growing rice under changing climatic scenario?challenges and options?.
Adhya in his paper said that rice varieties need to be developed which can deal with a biotic stress which is caused because of high temperature, drought and submergence because of flood and salinity. Besides varieties resistance to pests and diseases need to be altered.
?The new challenge of climate change, will require stepping up the research activities to unprecedented levels and the resilience of rice production systems has to be increased in a two-pronged approach of increasing tolerance to individual stresses and at the same time and achieving multiple stress tolerance,? Adhya said in a paper which was presented recently in a national symposium on ?Sustainable rice production system under change climate? organised by Cuttack-based CRRI where more than 80 agricultural scientists participated.
He suggested advancing peak anthesis toward early hours of the morning is an efficient strategy to escape high temperatures during later hours of the day.
As per the model prediction by climatologists, India will suffer severe climactic changes, including longer drought, lesser amount of total rainfall, that too distributed unequally with very heavy precipitation at shorter duration causing flooding, high temperature flux, higher incidence of tropical storms, CRRI is working extensively to develop rice varieties tolerant to various critical climatic conditions such as flood, high temperature and drought.
?We have developed and released several rice varieties tolerant to drought, including Vandana, Anjali, Sadabahar and Virendra. Recently, the institute has developed a variety named ?Sahbhagi dhan? which is highly tolerant to drought and is recommended for release in Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh under drought-prone situation.
The variety is endowed with longer roots to draw moisture from deeper layers of the soil and yields 3.8 tonne per hectare under such situations.
Besides, in a bid to fight submergence of standing crop, CRRI has developed several submergence tolerant varieties like Savitri, Gayatri, Tulasi, Sarala, Durga and Varshadhan.
?In June 2009, we released a variety named ?Swarna Sub1? with a crop duration of only 145 days with higher yield which can withstand complete submergence for 15-17 days without perishing and can grow normally and produce the desired grain yield after the water recedes,? Adhya noted.
India ?s rice production during 2010-11 is likely to fall short of 100 million tonne target mainly attributed to drought and floods in parts of the country. The rice output could be around 95 million tonne in case of good rabi crop. In 2008-09, India produced 99.5 million tonne of rice while last year because of drought the production was around 89 million tonne.
The traditional rice growing states of eastern India constitute Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and eastern parts of Uttar Pradesh, which account for 61% of the total rice area and 51% of total rice production in the country.