Attending a three-day workshop on Geo-Information Techniques for Understanding and Analysing Rain-fed Rice Environment in Eastern India," they expressed serious concern over the falling rice yield in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other parts of eastern India, which are major rice producing areas.

"The yield in the rain-fed areas of this belt stood around 1.8 tonnes per hectare, which is below the national average of 2.7 tonnes and the four tonnes average of Punjab and parts of Western UP," RK Singh, programme coordinator of the International Rice Research Institute, pointed out.

Following the shift to cash crops by farmers in the western UP and Punjab, there has been an urgent need for scientists to devise techniques to increase the yield in rain-fed and even drought-prone areas. "That is the only way to meet the shortfall arising onaccount of the shift in crops," Singh said adding, "You see, all this while we have been concentrating our energies only on increasing the yield in the well-irrigated areas."

Another scientist, RP Singh, maintained, "we will have to develop flood and drought-prone rice varieties, otherwise we may find it difficult to meet the increasing demand in the country where rice is the staple diet of two-thirds of the population". "Besides developing varieties more resistant to pests, we will also have to improve the soil health," he noted.

Two new varieties of rice are being specially developed for the flood-prone and drought-prone areas. These are Jal Lahiri and Jal Nidhi, developed by the Narendra Deva Agriculture University in Faizabad, UP. Scientists expressed hope that the constitution of the Rice Environment Analysis Network (Reanet), would go a long way in applying the geo-information techniques for rice research work in the states of UP, West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Manipur andArunachal Pradesh.