Water Response of Upland Rice Varieties Adopted in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Water Application Experiment
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Date
2014
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
J Rice Res
Abstract
Whether a rice Green Revolution in sub-Saharan Africa becomes a reality critically hinges on how far productive
upland rice cultivation diffuses in the region. In order to quantify the drought tolerance, the rate of water response
and the contribution of yield components to changes in yield due to water availability of upland rice varieties used in
sub-Saharan Africa, we conducted water application experiments in Namulonge, Uganda, using NERICA 4, NERICA
10, NARIC 2 and Yumenohatamochi, with five different levels of water application. We found that the NERICA
varieties were most drought tolerant, followed by NARIC 2. Yumenohatamochi did not withstand the lowest amount
of water application of 378 mm. The results suggested that the minimum water requirement was around 311-400
mm per season for the three varieties used widely in East Africa, and around 420-600 mm for Yumenohatamochi,
an upland variety in Japan famous in its drought tolerance. It was estimated that an additional water application of 1
mm increased rice yield by 11-12 kg /ha for the upland varieties tested. The high water response of upland rice was
brought about by high water response of four yield components, among which the rate of grain filling contributed
most to the increase in yield, followed by number of panicles/m2, number of grains per panicle and 1000 - grain
weight, in the order of the degree of contribution, for all the varieties tested.
Description
Keywords
Drought tolerance, NERICA, Minimum water requirement, Uganda, Yield component
Citation
Matsumoto S, Tsuboi T, Asea G, Maruyama A, Kikuchi M, et al. (2014) Water Response of Upland Rice Varieties Adopted in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Water Application Experiment. J Rice Res 2: 121. doi: 10.4172/jrr.1000121