How rice grows

ARIEL JAVELLANA

Irrigated rice grows in bunded (embanked) fields with assured water supplies and reliable drainage, allowing farmers to maintain shallow flooding of their fields until the crop is nearly mature. The focus of innovation during the Green Revolution, this highly productive system, permitting up to three rice crops per year in tropical lowlands, provides more than three-quarters of the worlds rice and is therefore central to global food security.

Flood-prone rice areas present a range of growing conditions in both coastal and inland environments that support more than 100 million Asians, despite high risks and low yields. Some rice varieties tolerate being submerged for several days. Deepwater rice elongates or floats to survive long inundations. Coastal areas subject to tidal surges require rice varieties that tolerate high salt levels. Minerals that accumulate in waterlogged soils often render them infertile.

BAS BOUMAN

Aerobic rice grows as a dryland crop much like wheat, usually direct-seeded

in lowlands or favorable uplands that are rainfed or have supplementary irrigation. With suitable varieties and properly managed inputs, farmers can achieve yields approaching those of conventionally irrigated fields. Aerobic rice is widely planted in rotation with pasture or soybean in Brazil and is increasingly being adopted in China.

Rainfed lowland rice grows in bunded fields flooded by rainfall during at least part of the cropping season. Farmers typically grow one rice crop per year, followed by a minor crop if the remaining wet season permits. Some rainfed lowland areas are favorable and reliably productive, but most are prone to drought or flooding or both. Toxic soils, weed pressure, insect pests and diseases are common problems.

GENE HETTEL

Montane lowland rice grows in bunded fields on valley bottoms or stepped terraces cut into hillsides. This system, either rainfed or irrigated, is the preferred way to grow rice in the mountains, but limited availability of suitable land means that many farmers dont have access to enough lowland area to feed their families. Typically, these farmers also grow upland rice to reduce or eliminate their rice deficit.

Upland rice grows as a rainfed dryland crop in permanent fields which

can be sustainable if rotated with other crops or in shifting slash-and-burn systems that become unsustainable, especially on hillsides, as population pressure shortens the fallow periods needed for soil regeneration. With few inputs, upland rice yields are very low but nevertheless critical to the household food security of some of the poorest people in Asia.

Note: Rice systems fall into categories in line with the categorizers focus to a plant breeder according to conditions affecting rice plants and to an agricultural economist Rice Today April 2003 35 according to farmers livelihood options. The categories included here are intended to be broadly informative, not definitive or exhaustive.

IRRI

GUY TREBUIL

IRRI