Saturday, September 6, 2008

Upland rice : useful genetic resource for drought tolerance

Upland rice, known as Ghaiya Dhan in Nepali, is mainly grown on Tars, and also in, marginal hillside terraces or hillsides newly cleared of forest cover in Nepal. Tars are actually ancient alluvial fans now formed into flat basins with aAt least 9% (constituting a total of about 126,000 ha) of the total rice area in Nepal is upland rice gricultural importance.


There were many landraces of upland rice in Nepal, has been disappeared now. Some of genotypes grown in Lamjung area of Nepal include - Sunakhari, Seto Tauli, Gegari Seto, Korsali, Kalnathre, Choto, Chobo, Pakhesali, Thantar, Charinagre (Khoplange), Karlunge, Mangaltar, Parampyuri, Dalle Sete, Kanaki, Phalame, Korsali, Banspate, Gegari rato, Dalle Sete, Karlunge, Thantar, Panthe, Subi, Tauli, and Pakhejhuwa.











Drought stress screening at rain-shelter culture
"To conserve and promote utility of these valuable sources, we have collected more than 30 genotypes from different part of Lamjung, Gorkha, Tanhu and Kaski" - says Rosyara. U.R. Rosyara and B.B. Adhikari in IRRI collaboration with IRRI and NAST has been working to promote diversity and productivity of rice in upland rice. Rice assessions are evaluated in farmers field and under greenhouse conditions for drought tolerance and other properties.

University-Farmer collboration
International Rice Research institute and IAAS are collaborating together to increase food security of uplands of Nepal. Participatory varietal selection, drought stress screening, crop management counselling has been continously done from 2003 to date. Once the rice was almost disappeared from farmers' field has been revitalized.

References
IRRI-IFAD project newsletter

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Upland rice high promise for drought tolerance genes, useful for tansplanted rainfed or partially irrigated rice. Could you please expand this article to more detail? If you have published work, please do mention on the website. Thanks

John said...

Such resources are important for the future.