Enhancing Rice Productivity in West Africa through Genetic Improvement

Abstract

Rice yields have stagnated in West Africa at 1 to 2 Mg ha"^ because of unfavorable rice environments and poor management practices. Interspecific rice cultivars, the New Rice for Africa (NERICA), were developed by crossing Asian rice {Oryza sativa L.) and African rice (O. glaberrima Steud.) to improve upland and lowland rice productivity in resource-poor farmers' fields. This paper provides an overview of recent studies, performed by the Africa Rice Center and its partners, on evaluation of growth and yield performance of upland and lowland NERICA cultivars and modern Asian rice cultivars including the improved upland indica cultivars often termed aerobic rice. Upland NERICA cultivars were found to lack the expected combination of superior yield potential with weed suppressive ability (WSA) and adaptation to low soil fertility, instead sharing similarity in these characteristics with their O. sativa parent WAB56-104 but remaining inferior to their O. glaberrima parent CG 14 in terms of tillering ability and WSA. Some aerobic rice cultivars were identified for high yielding ability, strong WSA, and superior adaptation to low-fertility uplands and waterlimited lowlands. Some lowland NERICA cultivars outyielded improved lowland O. sativa checks and aerobic rice cultivars in favorable lowlands, whereas they did not perform well in water-limited lowlands. The implications of these findings for future challenges for genetic improvement in West Africa are discussed.

Farmers’ Perception and Impact of Rice Yellow Mottle Disease on Rice Yields in Burkina Faso

“…Rice cultivation in both areas was at subsistence levels. Most farmers held small fields, and also (76%) had low yields of 1 -2 t/ha, which is consistent with the results reported for the whole West Africa [25]. Almost all farmers practiced mixed cropping.…”

Progress in varietal improvement for increasing upland rice productivity in the tropics

“…Similar to results from Asia (Asai et al, 2009;Atlin et al, 2006;Saito et al, 2007), Saito and Futakuchi (2009), Saito et al (2012) identified B6144-F-MR-6-0-0 (an indica variety developed in Indonesia) as a potential donor for improving yield under low-input conditions. Aus257 was identified as early maturing and high yielding, with strong weed-suppressive ability and greater nutrient uptake than NERICA 1 (Saito, 2016;Saito & Futakuchi, 2014).…”

Genetic Improvement of Rice (Oryza sativa) For Salt Tolerance: A Review

“…Genomics tools and approaches, particularly the QTL mapping and comparative mapping offer new possibilities for crop improvement (Paterson, 2012;Saito et al, 2012). Significant progress in rice functional genomics is being made since the completion of the international rice genome sequencing project (Chen et al, 2011) which offers tremendous opportunities for breeders to improve this important crop by molecular breeding.…”