Is the most widely consumed staple food in Asia. Along with other rice species, Oryza glaberrima (African rice) and wild rice (Zizania), rice has been the source of nutrients for over one billion people or one fifth of the world population at a consumption rate of 100kg per person per year.
The Challenges
Are Endless
The Demand of Rice
Rice (Oryza sativa or Asian rice, subspecies Indica, Japonica and Javanica)
In order to fulfil the rice demand for the growing population and with the target rice self-sufficiency of 75%, Malaysia must increase its rice productivity to reduce its dependency on imports. Malaysia imported 740,000 tonnes of rice last year, which cost about RM1.18bil.
Rice Yield Thread
Insect pests and disease infestations are the primary constraints in rice production. Agriculture yield threats pose a great danger to food security and economic livelihood of farmers. Shown below are larvae and adult forms of stemborer (Figure 1),one of the most devastating pests that affect rice yield. It causes dead heart or drying of the central tiller which affects most of Asian rice fields and can potentially reduce yield by 80 to 100 percent.
Over the past decades, other pests that have seriously threatened rice yield include bacterial leaf blight, Gundy bug (Leptocorisa acuta), false smut (ustilaginoidea virens), rat and brown hopper (Nilaparvata lugens, Figure 1).
Reports have shown that new pests, in the absence of natural local predators, could quickly spread like wildfire across the globe to potentially jeopardize food security.
Relatively recent outbreaks of golden snail and armyworm clearly illustrate this point.
It further suggests that conventional rice farming, relying heavily on pesticides in flooded fields, presumably is vulnerable to pest attack and most probably unsustainable. India, China, Vietnam and Sri Lanka have reported incidents of excessive use of pesticides. While in most of these cases additional treatment of pesticides would be detrimental to human health, it has no benefit for pest control. Bacterial blight or BLB causes wilting or drying of leaves, aggravated by high humidity and strong winds, and could begin as early as the seedling stage – due to infected seeds and can cause total loss. Gundy bug damage paddy panicles by sucking the contents of developing grains and thus causes empty or unfilled and discolored grains.
Planthopper causes hopperburn – browning and wilting of leaves that could be mistakenly identified as blight infestation. The presence of honey dew and sooty molds at the base of tillers confirms hopper presence. Golden snail was introduced to Asia as gourmet delicacy when suddenly it spread across the continent in the absence of its South American natural predator.2 Like rats, snails feed on young seedlings. Devastating outbreaks of armyworms were reported during early 2019 in Nepal, Pakistan and China.3 The caterpillars of Spodoptera frugiperda moth cut off paddy panicles and plant’s base.