Abstract
Rice (Oryza spp.) is one of the most important crops that significantly contribute to food security in Benin. In the current context of climate change, drought is known to be the main abiotic stress in crops and a major yield-limiting factor for agricultural production worldwide. To assess farmers’ knowledge, the preference traits of the rice cultivars in use, their perceptions and management of drought stress in rice production in Benin, an ethnobotanical investigation was conducted in 50 villages throughout the major zones. The results showed that High yield combined with good grain quality (including good taste, softness after cooking, less starch, white pericarp, long grain length and swelling when cooked), medium maturing and tolerance to drought and flood were the most desired traits motivating farmers for growing rice cultivars. Taste and high yield were the paramount traits of IR841, the most popular rice variety currently cropped in Benin followed by its fragrance. Drought constraints was reported as the most damaging abiotic stress across the villages surveyed with field lost estimated up to 100% at the flowering stage. Changing sowing date (80%), the use of irrigation systems (10%) and the cropping of early maturing cultivars (7%) were the most traditional strategies to reduce drought impacts. Needs for tolerant varieties were clearly expressed by farmers to mitigate drought effects on rice production in Benin. The results of this survey emphasize the need for rice breeders to focus more on improving grain quality in addition to high yield potential and tolerance to abiotic stresses mainly drought.
Highlights
Agriculture is considered as an economic sector in the world
Rice farming was the main activity for 77% and full-time occupation for 10% of farmers involved in the survey while 13% considered it as secondary occupation
Land cultivation is known as men activity, an important proportion of women was recorded among rice farmers. This trend was already observed on fonio millet cropping in Togo (Adoukonou-Sagbadja et al, 2006) as well on rice farming in many African countries such as Ghana, Mali, Tanzania and Kenya (Asante et al, 2013; Efisue et al, 2008; Hashim et al, 2018; Kimani et al, 2011) where women implications to farming activities were recorded up to 46%
Summary
Agriculture is considered as an economic sector in the world It contributes to 24% of global Gross Domestic Product and provides employment to 1.3 billion people or 22% of the world’s population (Smith et al, 2007). Agriculture is likewise the most important economic sector in West-Africa which is highly dependent on climate. Rice is one of the primary food source for more than half of the world’s population (Roy et al, 2016) It represents an important place in human nutrition, providing 20% of the calories and 15% of proteins consumed by world’s population (Sajid et al, 2015). West Africa has recorded the increasing of its production from 14.9 million tons to 18.0 million tons (11.4 million tons milled basis) in 2017 (FAO, 2018). Notwithstanding this report, most African countries are not self-sufficient in term of rice production, and so depend on huge amounts of imported rice that is estimated at 17.0 million tons in 2017 (FAO, 2018) making Africa the largest rice importing region in the world
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