Transplanting as an option to cope with abiotic stress in high‐altitude lowland rice production systems in East Africa

Abstract

Rice, Oryza sativa L., is one of the most important staple food commodities and constitutes the main calorie source for more than half of the world's population. For sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), rice has become a highly strategic and priority commodity (Abera et al., 2019). Beyond its current contribution to food security, demand has been rapidly growing for the past couple of decades due to high population growth, increased urbanization, and associated dietary preferences (Seck et al., 2013). Production has been also growing annually at 6% in the last decade (FAOSTAT, 2020).However, in spite of the recent increase in production and productivity, still only about 60% of the consumption is satisfied by