Knowledge for Development

Relevant publications


Rice and growing rice: farmer innovations and scientific advances

This special issue of Cahiers Agricultures presents a sample of the research results of the francophone rice research community and its partners within the GRiSP initiative. English and French articles are compiled on a series of specific subject areas and skills, as diverse as dynamics in policy development, rice quality assessment, pest and disease control, small rice farm viability, varietal diversity, irrigation costs, etc. The diversity of subjects shows that rice research today is multi-disciplinarily, embracing genetics, agronomy, ecology, agricultural and economic policies.    http://www.cahiersagricultures.fr/print/index.phtml?cle_parution=3895   (Cahiers Agriculture Vol. 22, No. 5, 2013)

17/12/2013


Discovery of a gene in rice that promotes a deeper root system

An international team led by the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences (NIAS) in Japan, has discovered the DRO1 gene that makes the roots of rice plants grow downward instead of outward. This allows the plants to reach water held deeper in the soil. Plants with DRO1 can continue to grow and produce grain even under extreme water stress. The researchers also found that the DRO1 gene appears to change only the angle of root growth and slightly increase the length of the root tips, rather than the overall root density, meaning that energy is not diverted away from the production of grain.   http://books.irri.org/RT12-4_revolution.pdf   (IRRI, 10/2013)

17/12/2013


SRI: much more than more rice

The March 2013 issue of Farming Matters is dedicated to the System of Rice Intensification (SRI). It contains case studies, analysis and interviews dedicated to this innovative form of rice production.http://www.agriculturesnetwork.org/get-involved/events/events-2013/sri-wageningen(Farming Matters, 03/2013)

22/05/2013


SRI - much more than more rice

The March 2013 issue of Farming Matters is dedicated to the System of Rice Intensification (SRI). It contains case studies, analysis and interviews dedicated to this innovative form of rice production.http://www.agriculturesnetwork.org/get-involved/events/events-2013/sri-wageningen#.UVqgf6wPM6s.twitter(Farming Matters, 03/2013)

22/05/2013


Improvement of rice drought tolerance through backcross breeding: Evaluation of donors and selection in drought nurseries

H.R. Lafitte,, Z.K. Li, C.H.M. Vijayakumar , Y.M. Gao, Y. Shi, J.L. Xu et al. Field Crops Research 97, 77–86. 2006.A large-scale backcross breeding project has been undertaken to improve drought tolerance in rice. Over 160 donor cultivars from 25 countries have been used in this project, representing a significant proportion of the genetic variation in cultivated rice. These cultivars were evaluated in field experiments in the Philippines to assess their responses to drought in terms of plant height, heading date, and grain yield. Drought was imposed near heading stage, in experiments that were established either in lowland (anaerobic) fields or upland (aerobic) soil.Despite the poor adaptation of some cultivars to the tropics, it was possible to identify significant variation in plant response to drought treatments, and contrasting effects on flowering delay and growth. Subsequently, 325 BC2F2 bulk populations, developed by backcrossing many of these donors to one of three elite recurrent parents, were screened under drought in lowland or upland nurseries. Stress levels were managed to eliminate almost all seed set in recurrent parents, and those progeny that produced grain were selected as being putatively drought-tolerant.The number of plants selected within a population was not associated with the per se drought response of the donors in the direct evaluation, indicating the wide presence of cryptic genetic variation for drought tolerance in the apparently drought-susceptible cultivars. The genetic background of the recurrent parent affected the number of plants selected, as did the selection environment (upland versus lowland nurseries). These drought-selected introgression lines represent a useful genetic resource to develop improved cultivars for farmers in rain-fed or water-scarce rice-growing regions, and also to improve our understanding of the genetic and molecular basis of drought tolerance in rice.

20/11/2012


The Quiet Revolution in Agrifood Value Chains in Asia: The Case of Increasing Quality in Rice Markets in Bangladesh

B. Minten, K.A.S. Murshid and T. Reardon. IFPRI Discussion Paper 01141. 2011.In Bangladesh — where rice accounts for almost 70% of consumers’ caloric intake — the share of the less expensive, low-quality coarse rice is shown to be rapidly decreasing in rice markets and the quality premium for the best-quality rice has been consistently on the rise in the last decades. The off-farm share in the final consumer price increases from 27% to 35% to 48% for low-, medium-, and high-quality rice, respectively, and the increasing demand for higher quality is thus seemingly associated with a more important off-farm food sector — in particular, milling, retailing, and branding — as well as a transformed milling industry.The production of better-quality rice has been enabled by automatic or semiautomatic technology present in larger mills. It is further reported that the labour rewards for and the technical efficiency of growing different rice qualities are not significantly different, and farmers do not benefit directly from consumers’ increased willingness to pay for higher rice quality.

20/11/2012


Climate Mitigation Potential of Rice Value Chain. Carbon Balance of Rice Value Chain - Strategic Scenarios in Madagascar towards 2020

L. Bockel, M. Tinlot and A. Gentien. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy. 2010.A rice growth scenario based on recent rice value chain development has been compared to a business-as-usual (BAU) more pessimistic scenario (natural trend without massive public intervention). Within this work, the attention is focused on carbon balance and on land use aspects of the two scenarios. The carbon balance result is an incremental carbon balance due to a wide set of pro-active public interventions.The carbon balance appraisal realized on the rice value chain put forward a mitigation potential rising 5.6 million tonnes of equivalent-CO2 per year, during the period from 2003 to 2020, hence contributing to the global effort to decrease anthropogenic emissions and to fight against climate change. The analysis underlines especially the possible synergies between sustainable land use management, food security and agricultural mitigation.

20/11/2012


Rice Value Chain Analysis

C. van Dooren. Report for IFAT/EFTA/FLO. 2005.The rice value chain is considered, with particular reference to Thailand. Participatory Technology Development has been a key factor in helping farmers engage with new techniques. A key problem for the organic rice industry is the disinfection technology to prevent insect infestation during storage. The conventional practice of chemical fumigation is not acceptable by organic standards. Using vacuum packs and cargo containers with a controlled atmosphere system are under investigation, but neither solution is ideal.

20/11/2012


Developing competitive rice value chains

J.D. Stryker. Second Africa Rice Congress, Bamako, Mali, 22–26 March 2010: Innovation and Partnerships to Realize Africa’s Rice Potential. 2010.In a number of African countries, major advances were made in rice competitiveness some years ago through liberalization of rice marketing and milling. This led to the introduction of small rice hullers, which were able to process rice relatively inexpensively compared with larger mills, often owned by the state. There were also substantial savings in the cost of transporting paddy and the value for animal feed of the hulling by-products.However, with rice prices having risen on world markets and with advances in milling technology, it is time to revisit this question. The imported rice with which domestic production competes is of a quality standard not met by most small hullers, resulting in price discounts and lost profits. Evidence from Rwanda and a few other countries suggests that milling technology currently exists that allows for upgrading of quality without necessarily losing the advantages of operating on a relatively small scale. Better milling should take care of the problems of impurities, lack of uniformity, and high percentage of broken grains.

20/11/2012


An International Center for Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development: Study of the Domestic Rice Value Chains in the Niger Basin of Mali, Niger, and Nigeria, West Africa

IFDC, Muscle Shoals, AL, USA. 2008.The increasing world prices of rice have led to interest in increasing domestic production in countries relying on imports, including in West Africa. This study shows that efforts are needed which focus on alleviating the underlying causes of uncompetitive rice sectors. There is an urgent need for the development of efficient technology transfer methods to enable the farmers to adopt improved production, harvest and post-harvest technologies.

20/11/2012


Rice Value Chain Study: Cambodia

Agrifood Consulting International for the World Bank. 2002.There is a fundamental lack of an enabling environment, in terms of infrastructure and institutions for rice production in Cambodia. However, Cambodia possesses the ability to become an exporter of small volumes of niche and high-quality varieties of rice. In order to increase yields from their current average level of around 2 tonnes per hectare, improvements need to be made in seed varieties, access to inputs (credit, fertilizer, pesticides and irrigation) and agricultural extension. A lack of capital perpetuates the low levels of technology implicit in the sector. High levels of milling technology have boosted Thai Rice productivity.Simulations of improved technology suggest that the recovery rate for dry season rice was increased from 63% to 65%, and for wet season rice from 65% to 67%. Adoption of high-yielding varieties is the adoption of a technology package, not just the adoption of seeds, and the relative performance of the improved varieties under low levels of technology inputs is not much better (or even worse) than traditional varieties.

20/11/2012


Rice Production in Value Chain with a Gender Perspective in Tanzania

UNDP/JICA Joint Study Project on the Promotion of Gender Mainstreaming in Coalition for African Rice Development (CARD). 2011.The diversified roles played by women farmers in rice sector, from production to marketing, should be reviewed with a value chain perspective, in other African countries, in order to improve rice production as well as family survival strategies. The respective findings, including the cases in Tanzania, should be well reviewed and integrated into the rice development strategies in all the CARD member countries in Sub-Sahara Africa. The introduction of modern rice farming technology has increased production per hectare rising from 3.1 tons in 2002 to 4.3 tons in 2005.

20/11/2012


Rice Value Chain Analysis – Sokoto State Nigeria (NIG 244)

R. Tinsley. Winrock International, Little Rock, Arkansas, USA. 2012.The rice value chain is dominated by small family enterprises, each vying for a limited market share. This includes the smallholder producers as family enterprises. The value chain represents production (mostly the farmers and support services), processing (parboiling and milling), and marketing (mostly bulk through the open air markets). As a technology, parboiling is a long-term health hazard to the women tending the fire, and NGOs are producing less smoky vats. Shifting to propane as the primary energy source in rural areas may also help.Also, the processing needs to look at the technological advance of shifting from the single-phase mills to two-phase single pass mills, reducing broken grain and improving recovery. The prospects of getting involved in bagging small quantities for supermarket and convenience store sales needs evaluation. Much of the potential enhancements of the value chain will require some substantial capital investment, requiring institutional credit to allow fairly large loans for equipment. Persuading rice growers to adopt proven technologies is a key issue.

20/11/2012


Rice in Mali: the business enabling environment for rice

USAID, Washington DC, USA: Value Chain Briefer February 2012.Rice is the dominant commercial food crop in Mali, accounting for 12.3% of agricultural value. This success has been fuelled mainly by public-led investments in large-scale, gravity-fed irrigation infrastructure and some positive policy shifts, such as the liberalization of marketing and processing in the main production zone of the Office du Niger (ON) during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Malian rice production is competitive and can be profitable, benefiting from higher global prices and an increase in the demand for local rice.However, despite this underlying competitiveness, there is little private investment flowing to rice production or processing. Rice processing is inefficient, with a need to improve the technology to avoid high proportions of broken rice. Improved mills would add value and increase the size of the market, and this represents a notable investment opportunity, given proper conditions. The second phase of the Alatona Irrigation Project provides a unique opportunity to develop a public private partnership to invest in large scale rice production. However, the government must take ownership of this commercial vision.

20/11/2012


Value chain analysis of rice and maize in selected districts in Tanzania. Volume I: introduction, context analysis and recommended way forward

Match Maker Associates Limited for ACT – Tanzania. 2010.The objective of the analysis was to identify potential value chains development projects, and to recommend sub sector and value-chain development strategies. The study was based on field interviews undertaken in 13 districts where Tanzania Agriculture Partnership is active and which are considered to have significant production growth potential. The largest share, by far, of total government investment in agriculture has been for on-farm activities and for agricultural inputs and technology transfers, such as core as extension services, animal disease control, irrigation, and agronomic research.An example of a high-tech, bottom-up supply chain project that could work in Tanzania is Drum Net, which is based in Kenya. Drum Net applies cell phone technology and funds management via cell phone to coordinate and control on farm activities with off farm activities. It has been growing gradually over the past 6 years and has assisted farmers from moving from low-revenue yield markets to high-revenue yield markets in which timely order delivery and fail-sale quality controls are essential.

20/11/2012


The rice value chain in Kenya with reference to rice producers

R.A. Emongór, F.M. Mureithi, S.N. Ndirangu, D.M. Kitaka and B.M. Walela. The 12th KARI Biennial Scientific Conference, KARI, Kenya. 2010.This rice value chain study was carried out in June-August 2009. A representative sample of farmers, millers, traders and service providers were sampled and interviewed using a structured questionnaire. Informal methods such as key informant interviews, focus group discussions and secondary data were used to augment data collected by the use of structured questionnaires.Results showed that at the producer level, rice production required intensive use of farm inputs such as labour, fertilizer and seed which most farmers were not using optimally because of high costs involved. The major constraints affecting rice farmers were lack of credit, lack or low provision of extension and research services and low supply of irrigation water in irrigation schemes. Rice production in all the different ecosystems was profitable even though irrigated rice production was more profitable than rain fed rice production.

20/11/2012


Rice Technologies: Strategic Choices and Policy Options

M. Hossain, M. Asaduzzaman, M. A. Sattar Mandal, U. Deb and S. Jones. BIDS Policy Brief No. 0903. 2009.This Policy Brief discusses the issues of maintaining national food self-sufficiency in Bangladesh in the face of emerging challenges in the agriculture sector. A key approach is to develop new agricultural technologies, which make it possible to produce food more cheaply (by lowering the unit cost of production) and do so in environmentally sustainable ways. The new rice technologies are scale-neutral (i.e. small and marginal farmers can cultivate and benefit from the new varieties as well as larger farmers) and have been adopted widely by all classes of farmer. Developing technologies for unfavourable agro-ecologies is a main focus now. Breeding of hybrid rice that focuses on the cropping system and unfavourable environments, including tolerance of arsenic, and protection of arable land and improving soil fertility are key science-based approaches to improving the value chain.

20/11/2012


Value chain analysis of wheat and rice In Uttar Pradesh, India

S. McCarthy, D. Singh and H. Schiff. ACDI/VOCA for World Vision, Partnership for Innovation and Knowledge in Agriculture. 2008.This analysis reports that major constraints are: fertilizers shortages, lack of knowledge in cultivation and post-harvest practices, land management and irrigation, weak horizontal linkages, lack of vertical integration and market distortion. Amongst the suggestions are improving on-farm storage, and establishing grades and standards. In terms of post-harvest handling, there is an opportunity to reduce storage losses through education on on-farm storage techniques that utilize current appropriate technology solutions and correct chemical usage for controlling storage pests.

20/11/2012


Quantitative Value Chain Analysis

J. Keyser and H. Tchale. World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper 5242. 2010.This paper analyzes the competitiveness of Malawi’s key agricultural commodities (tobacco, maize, cotton, and rice) using prices that prevailed in the 2007/08 agricultural season. The paper employs a quantitative value chain methodology to assess the country's prospects for competitiveness and suggests weak links along the value chain that require attention in order to improve trade competitiveness. Malawi does not have a competitive edge in maize and rice production for export. As such, Malawi would better pursue an import substitution strategy in these cereals, and perhaps only aim at the export market when regional market opportunities arise. The high cost of inputs leads to low uptake of fertilizer and improved seed. Overtime, low uptake of improved technology results in under-capitalization in the sector which tends to arrest any more technological and institutional innovations. There is a need for more rapid technology transformation targeting productivity growth.

20/11/2012