Journal of Biotechnology & Biomaterials
Open Access

Abstract

Water scarcity has threatened the traditional way of rice cultivation. Conventionally, rice is cultivated in flooded conditions and it requires huge amount of water (5000 litres of water for producing one kg rice). Asiaâ�?�?s irrigated rice fields produce about 75% of all rice harvested and account for more than 45% of the total diverted fresh water. To tackle the problem of water scarcity, research has been directed towards the development of â�?�?aerobic riceâ�? varieties that combine the drought-resistant characteristics of upland varieties with the high-yielding traits of lowland varieties. Aerobic rice has advantage of the droughtresistant characteristics of upland varieties with the high-yielding traits of lowland varieties, grown in irrigated, flooded fields. In aerobic rice varieties, roots grow deeper and more profusely in comparison to shallow roots of 5 inches in conventional rice varieties which help in better absorption of water thereby eliminating the need for water logging and non-methane emitting. Aerobic rice system eliminates surface runoff, percolation and evaporation losses resulting in twice the water productivity of flood irrigated rice. Aerobic rice requires 50% or less of the amount of water used by lowland rice. In India, development of aerobic rice varieties was initiated at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore in 1980 using the available upland paddy and high-yielding rice germplasm and several aerobic rice varieties such as MAS946-1, PMK3, MAS25, MAS26 and MAS946 have also been developed for aerobic cultivation using conventional breeding and marker-assisted selection techniques in combination. Basmati rice breeding has been proven difficult because of poor combining ability, incompatibility with indica/japonica cultivars and high inter-group hybrid sterility. Introgression of desirable traits from indica, japonica or aus rice varieties into basmati rice is further complicated because of the need to keep all the basmati rice grain and cooking quality traits intact during the selection process.

Biography

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