Abstract
Drought and limited availability of water serve as the serious limitation for rice production in rainfed ecosystems. Among the major rainfed rice-cultivating areas, states of eastern India occupy one of the largest drought-prone ecologies in the world. Cultivating drought tolerant rice varieties can serve as the most coherent approach to ensure food security in these areas. International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), along with its national collaborators, has developed drought tolerant rice varieties possessing high yield along with desirable grain quality. One such conventionally bred line, IR74371-70-1-1, has been released with different names in the different countries: in India as Sahbhagi Dhan, in Nepal as Sukha Dhan 3, and in Bangladesh as BRRI Dhan 56. This indicates the suitability of this line to show better performance across the wide range of environments. Sahbhagi Dhan is a short duration variety that has genetic drought tolerance and is more efficient at extracting available moisture from the soil. During drought years, farmers cultivating Sahbhagi Dhan obtained the yield advantage of 0.8 to 1.6 t ha−1 over currently grown long duration as well as traditional varieties. In 2012, when the paddy crop was hit by drought, Sahbhagi Dhan revealed the yield advantage of more than a t ha−1, which reduced to 0.78 and 0.56 t ha−1 during non-drought years of 2013 and 2014, respectively. Data taken from head to head trials during 2017 showed that Sahbhagi Dhan exhibited better performance over the existing rice varieties grown by farmers even under non-drought conditions. The important feature of Sahbhagi Dhan is its evident impact under drought and no yield penalty under favorable conditions over the counterfactual varieties of the same duration. Along with better yield under drought, the important advantage of Sahbhagi Dhan is the short maturity duration of this variety. This allows the farmers to advance the succeeding crop and creates an opportunity for accommodating an additional crop under favorable rainfed ecology, thereby enhancing the cropping intensity. Since the majority of the farmers living in drought prone ecologies are socio-economically under privileged, Sahbhagi Dhan, along with other drought tolerant varieties, can serve as one of the most viable and deliverable technologies for eradicating poverty from these ecologies dependent on rainfed rice.
Highlights
Rice serves as the main staple food for more than half of the world’s 7 billion people
Due to the continuing adverse effects of climate change, water deficit is expected to be a major challenge for sustained rice production in the near future [14]
The varieties exhibiting drought tolerance along with better grain yield and desirable quality can serve as the most logical approach to cope up with the menaces inflicted by drought [18]
Summary
Rice serves as the main staple food for more than half of the world’s 7 billion people. In India, out of the total 20.4 million ha of rainfed rice, about 16.2 million ha is occupied by eastern Indian states, of which 6.3 million ha of upland and 7.3 million ha of lowland areas are drought-prone [4,5]. The extent of grain yield losses depends on the duration of water scarcity, the crop growth stage, and the intensity of the stress [9,13]. Rapid advancements have been made in developing drought tolerant rice varieties, continuous attempts need to be carried out to disseminate these varieties in unfavourable growing environments These varieties can serve as the most viable and deliverable technologies for eradicating poverty from the ecologies dependent on rainfed rice [19]
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