Agronomic Evaluation of Alternative Lowland Rice Varieties for Farmers in Uganda; A Case of Aromatic Rice

Simon Alibu^1, , Morish Obura¹, James Ekebu¹, Doreen Nampamya², Jimmy Lamo¹, Godfrey Asea¹ and Tae-Seon Park²

¹National Agricultural Research Organization, National Crops Resources Research (NaCRRI), Kampala

²Korea Program on International Agriculture (KOPIA), C/o National Agricultural Research Organization, National Agricultural Research Laboratories (NARL), Kampala, Uganda

Cite this paper

Simon Alibu, Morish Obura, James Ekebu, Doreen Nampamya, Jimmy Lamo, Godfrey Asea and Tae-Seon Park. Agronomic Evaluation of Alternative Lowland Rice Varieties for Farmers in Uganda; A Case of Aromatic Rice. Journal of Food Security. 2022; 10(2):81-88. doi: 10.12691/JFS-10-2-5

Abstract

Rice has recently become an important crop for tackling food insecurity and poverty in Uganda. Over three-quarters of the country's local rice production occurs in irrigated and rain-fed lowlands in eastern and northern Uganda. However, breeding programs and seed systems have only partially met farmers' expectations for new lowland rice varieties and seeds recently, so farmers are sticking with old varieties. However, a new high-yielding, early-maturing, and most importantly, aromatic variety, NARORICE-1, released in 2019, seems to offer a new ray of hope for lowland rice farmers. This study compared the agronomic performance of NARORICE-1 and two promising KAFACI lines to a popular farmer's variety, WITA-9, in central, eastern, and northern Uganda. These varieties were evaluated for growth and yield response to higher seedling counts per hill when transplanted. Doho was the most productive location with an average rice yield of 6.1 t ha^–1, significantly higher than NaCRRI and Olweny with 3.9 and 3.7 t ha^–1, respectively. The yield performance of NARORICE-1 was comparable to that of the popular farmer's variety WITA-9. Increasing the number of seedlings per hill from three to seven during transplanting had no clear effect on the paddy yield of NARORICE-1. Besides higher yield potential, NARORICE-1's other additional beneficial traits such as aroma, shorter growing time, and higher milling efficiency have made it one of the growers' favorites.

Keywords

fragrant rice, aromatic rice, Supa, PR107, KOPIA Uganda, NaCRRI

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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