THE Ministry of Agriculture has completed its trial run on the new bio-fortified rice variety, which is said to be the gateway to promoting a healthier lifestyle and eradicating hunger across the world. Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha, said that harvesting of the variety has been completed at the Burma Rice Research Station, with a total of 12,660 bags of paddy being produced to date.
In an effort to promote healthy food choices among citizens, the Ministry of Agriculture’s Rice Research Station has collaborated with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) to develop a bio-fortified rice variety with nutritionally enhanced zinc.
Following a visit to the research station back in February, Minister Mustapha had related that the new rice variety would help curve the issues of hunger and malnutrition across the Caribbean and eventually across the world.

“This variety here is not only capable of helping the Caribbean curb hunger and malnutrition, but also at the same time helping to enhance certain healthy lifestyles. It can help with diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and those things,” he said.
Additionally, the minister said that he is optimistic that the new variety will be able to unlock greater potential for Guyana’s rice industry.
“I am very excited for our farmers to get interest in this because this will be [healthier] for the people. Rice is not only a staple in Guyana but in the entire Caribbean and many parts of the world and rice has been an important revenue earner for us,” Mustapha said, adding: “It will help us to have preferential markets; it will help also to deal with certain diseases. I am very optimistic that this can be a very successful variety after the completion of the trials.”

Representative of IICA to Guyana, Wilmot Garnett, during a previous interview with the Guyana Chronicle, said that many countries in the Caribbean and the world over are plagued with hunger and malnutrition because of the quality and choice of ingredients in their foods.
For this reason, the IICA has teamed up with local authorities to alleviate this problem in Guyana, the Caribbean and eventually the world, with a rice variety with nutritionally enhanced Zinc. Garnett had said that this project was made possible through a special COVID-19 fund set up by the IICA for the Caribbean Region.
The funds cater for the establishment of Preliminary Yield Trial (PYT), during the first crop of 2021, at four locations across the Caribbean.
Locally, the institute contributed US$10,000 while the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) invested US$8,000 into this project.