Good News! Perennial Rice Grows in Sixth African Country
Since last November, a group of scientists from Chinese bio-company BGI Group have been working in a piece of land in Burundi -- to grown perennial rice.
Burundi is the sixth country BGI introduced perennial rice. Previous trials in Uganda, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Malawi and Madagascar are all successful. Zhang Wanling, a Project Manager at BGI Bioverse, a subsidiary of BGI Group, was quoted by a report as saying that "This year, we are also planning to expand it to Tanzania, Kenya, and countries in West Africa, like Nigeria and Côte d'Ivoire."
The following picture shows Burundian First Lady Angeline Ndayishimiye visited the perennial rice field on April 5.
Launched in December 2021, Uganda’s National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) Rice One, the commercial name of PR 107, a perennial rice variety from a synergistic collaboration between NARO, China’s Yunnan University and BGI Group, has been unveiled in the African country. As average yields per acre in a growing season of two months for traditional local rice were about 900 kilograms to 1.2 tons, perennial rice yields about 1.5 to 2.5 tons. The annual yield can reach up to 11 tons per hectare without the need for replanting. This efficiency not only benefits the environment by preserving soil integrity but also ensures a profitable venture for farmers.
(Above picture shows Uganda farmers dancing when harvesting. )
Rice Today, published by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) on behalf of the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP), carried an article today on its website, which said “Perennial rice can be a game changer in Africa.” It also said that perennial rice can reduce production input costs by more than 50% compared to cultivated rice.
Perennial crops are agriculture revolution. I wrote about it ten years ago after my visit to the Land Institute in Kansas. Scientists there have been working on perennial crops for 4 decades. I was very excited to learn BGI is helping African farmers to plant perennial rice. I shared it through my newsletter. (A tale of China’s perennial rice
https://xueyingyingxue.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-chinas-perennial-rice)
Hope the seeds of perennial crops can spread to more places in the world!