An economic assessment of rice breeding in New South Wales

Abstract

An economic assessment is made of the rice-breeding program at Yanco, New South Wales. The achievements of the breeding program over the past 30 years are identified and quantified. The economic assessment considers current investment in the breeding program and analyses the likelihood of the program achieving sufficient gains through breeding to justify that investment on economic grounds. We estimate the rate of improvement in yield and quality that would give the required increase in the industry's value of production. Based on the contribution of new varieties to past gains, the future gains needed through breeding to accomplish satisfactory economic returns are achievable. However, the analysis highlights the need for focused breeding efforts to maximise the returns from the breeding program.

Integrating straw yield and quality into multi‐dimensional improvement of lentil (Lens culinaris)

“…Lentil straw is an important source of fodder for livestock in Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. 1 Lentil straw has been reported to have better degradation in the rumen as compared to cereal straws. 2,3 High acceptability and digestibility of lentil straw in the ration of livestock was reported by Abbeddou et al 4 Heuzé et al 5 reported that crude protein (CP) content of lentil straw ranged between 58 and 111 g kg −1 DM and metabolisable energy (ME) ranged between 6.7 and 8.3 MJ kg −1 DM.…”

Identifying international rice research spillovers in New South Wales

“…One consequence of the germplasm flows is the impact on returns to the Australian rice breeding program. If all the benefits of yield improvement are allocated to the Australian program (as in Brennan et al, 1994), the economic returns to that research will be overstated. If the impact of the international flows is taken into account, the returns to the Australian breeding efforts will be reduced by about 64%.…”

“…The rice breeding program at Y anco, first estab-lished in 1928, has been a major influence on the development of the Australian rice industry (Brennan et al, 1994). The industry has sought a number of characteristics to be incorporated in the varieties, including maturity type, high yield and various quality parameters.…”

“…To enable comparisons to be made between the results of this study and others, an attempt was made to estimate the monetary value of the contributions of international germplasm to Australian rice im- Brennan et al (1994) estimated that the rate of varietal yield improvement in Australian rice over the thirty years to 1993-1994 was 0.68% per year. That was extended to 1994-1995, meaning that yields had increased as a result of varietal improvement by 24.2% since 1962.…”