Rice helps feed almost half of the earth’s population on a daily basis; and just

as important, provides vital employment and incomes for billions of poor people, most of them in Asia.
But, at a meeting of the region’s main rice-producing nations in Indonesia, the challenges facing rice production were highlighted and discussed with a focus on finding solutions through science and technology.
In this regard, one of the crucial challenges facing rice-producing countries is the development of new varieties to deal with the effects of climate change, pests and diseases, and producing higher yields.
The world’s major rice-producing countries – including the two most populous nations, China and India – have emphasised the importance of continuing to develop new rice varieties, to guarantee Asia’s food security and support the region’s economic development.
The ninth annual meeting of the Council for Partnerships on Rice Research in Asia (CORRA) was told that, after a brief slowdown in regional collaboration to develop new rice varieties, the situation was improving once again. CORRA brings together senior research representatives of 15 major rice-producing and consuming nations each year, to highlight the issues, threats and challenges facing the rice industry in its efforts to feed the estimated three billion people who consume the staple food each day.
“The introduction of plant variety protection rights and the continued implementation of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture have clearly had an impact on the development of new rice varieties, especially the exchange of material between countries,” said CORRA Chairman Seong-Hee Lee. Dr. Lee is also the director-general of the Rural Development Administration’s National Institute of Crop Science in South Korea.
In its three decades of work,the International Network for Genetic Evaluation of Rice (INGER) has provided materials for the development and release of 667 new rice varieties in 62 countries around the world. The average annual value of each of these varieties has been estimated by experts at US$2.5M, providing clear evidence of the major boost new varieties can provide to each country’s rural economy.
Here, in Guyana, we have also been working persistently to develop new varieties of rice in our thrust to increase production and productivity; and in this regard, we have been largely successful, because rice production has been on a steady rise, with last year being a record- breaking one, with over 400,000 tonnes of rice being produced.
Speaking at the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) Open Day at the Rice Research Station at Burma, Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, disclosed that 12 new rice varieties were introduced since 1995, contributing to the production in Guyana, which has been on the increase despite adverse weather conditions.
This is an impressive achievement by any standard, and is a further demonstration of the government’s commitment to the expansion and sustainability of the rice industry, which under the PNC government was down on its knees and on the verge of collapsing.
During that government, the number of rice-growing families declined from 45,000 to about 23,000, and this alone tells the story of what was happening to the rice industry.
Today, the rice industry has been returned to viability, and is expanding rapidly. Of course, the rice industry’s growth and expansion has not only been due to government’s interventions, but also because of the persistence, sacrifice and resilience of our rice farmers, who had suffered heavy losses in the past because of adverse weather conditions.