Water-proof rice to make a splash next year

By Carmel Crimmins

MANILA (Reuters) - Farmers in India and Bangladesh will likely start commercial production of flood-tolerant rice next year giving them protection against crop losses from typhoons and heavy monsoon rains.

"We now have a fairly big programme in India and Bangladesh to multiply the seed," David Mackill, programme leader for rain-fed environments at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, told Reuters on Tuesday.

"It would survive for about two weeks under water."

Flood waters regularly engulf vast rainfed lowland areas of Asia and crop losses from prolonged submergence are estimated at around $1 billion a year, Mackill said.

Myanmar, once the world's biggest rice exporter, faces the risk of food shortages after a cyclone flooded 5,000 sq km of its rice bowl earlier this month.

Before Cyclone Nargis struck, Myanmar had offered to sell Bangladesh 300,000 tonnes of rice annually after the south Asian country lost 2 million tonnes of planted rice due to a cyclone and two spells of flooding last year.

With the Sub1 flood-resistant gene, farmers could produce 6 tonnes of rice per hectare under normal conditions and around 3 tonnes if the paddy was submerged for two weeks. Normal varieties would only yield 1 tonne or less if subject to that sort of submergence.

"The variety that has this gene still performs as well as the original without submergence," said Mackill. "It's like an insurance policy."