Kerala: Regional agricultural research station develops saline tolerant organic rice variety

KANNUR: The regional agricultural research station at Pilicode in Kerala's Kasaragod has developed a saline tolerant organic rice variety, Mithila, for saline flooded naturally organic sea coastal rice tracts of Kerala.
This new variety is the result of nearly 18 years of research, adopting organic plant breeding strategy and also farmer participatory selection strategy for easy and early adoption of variety by farmers, said the researchers.
What is special about mithila is that it promises yield under less management of organic ecosystem, said Dr Vanaja T, principal investigator and principal breeder of the organic rice variety.
“This variety is of medium duration, and gets ready for harvesting in 125-130 days, and also it is semi-tall, with 117 cm height,” she said.
Moreover, it is equally suitable for acidic saline soil of Kaipad tracts of north Kerala and alkaline saline soil of Pokkali tracts, said the researchers. Its average yield in stress soil is 5.2 tonnes grain and 9.7 tonnes of straw per hector.
“It is resistant to sheath blight, leaf folder and gall midge and moderately resistant to brown spot, bacterial leaf blight and whorl maggots. It is tolerant to lodging and hence amenable for easy machine harvest. It is also suitable for non saline flooded tract,” she added.
Kaipad rice tract exists in Kannur, Kozhikode and Kasaragod, while Pokkali rice tract exists in Ernakulam, Alappuzha and Thrissur.
The new variety was recently approved by the state variety release committee chaired by agriculture production commissioner.
In the national level testing in 29 locations at different saline–alkaline soils in All India Coordinated Research Programme, it showed better performance as compared to the local check variety, said the researchers.
Moreover, it has good cooking and nutritional qualities with red kernel colour. While cooking, it has comparatively more cooked rice, they claimed. It exhibits very good milling percentage (81.8%) and good percentage of unbroken rice (73%), according to them.
The new variety was officially released by Trikaripur MLA M Rajagopalan recently, who handed over 900kg seeds to Malabar Kaipad farmers society, the stakeholders society of Kaipad tract to do seed village programme in 30 acres on selected Kaipad tracts of the three northern districts.