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.
AT RISK: The council reiterated that people should seriously consider the necessity of visiting China, after Beijing passed 22 guidelines to punish ‘die-hard’ separatists The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has since Jan. 1 last year received 65 petitions regarding Taiwanese who were interrogated or detained in China, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. Fifty-two either went missing or had their personal freedoms restricted, with some put in criminal detention, while 13 were interrogated and temporarily detained, he said in a radio interview. On June 21 last year, China announced 22 guidelines to punish “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” allowing Chinese courts to try people in absentia. The guidelines are uncivilized and inhumane, allowing Beijing to seize assets and issue the death penalty, with no regard for potential
STILL COMMITTED: The US opposes any forced change to the ‘status quo’ in the Strait, but also does not seek conflict, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US President Donald Trump’s administration released US$5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, including US$870 million in security exemptions for programs in Taiwan, a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters showed. Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, halting funding for everything from programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases to providing shelters for millions of displaced people across the globe. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said that all foreign assistance must align with Trump’s “America First” priorities, issued waivers late last month on military aid to Israel and Egypt, the
‘UNITED FRONT’ FRONTS: Barring contact with Huaqiao and Jinan universities is needed to stop China targeting Taiwanese students, the education minister said Taiwan has blacklisted two Chinese universities from conducting academic exchange programs in the nation after reports that the institutes are arms of Beijing’s United Front Work Department, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published yesterday. China’s Huaqiao University in Xiamen and Quanzhou, as well as Jinan University in Guangzhou, which have 600 and 1,500 Taiwanese on their rolls respectively, are under direct control of the Chinese government’s political warfare branch, Cheng said, citing reports by national security officials. A comprehensive ban on Taiwanese institutions collaborating or
France’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and accompanying warships were in the Philippines yesterday after holding combat drills with Philippine forces in the disputed South China Sea in a show of firepower that would likely antagonize China. The Charles de Gaulle on Friday docked at Subic Bay, a former US naval base northwest of Manila, for a break after more than two months of deployment in the Indo-Pacific region. The French carrier engaged with security allies for contingency readiness and to promote regional security, including with Philippine forces, navy ships and fighter jets. They held anti-submarine warfare drills and aerial combat training on Friday in
RSS