Agriculture Business Week

In many low-lying areas in San Antonio, Nueva Ecija, rice farms are not cultivated during the wet season because of flood water from neighboring towns and provinces normally come together in these areas. In many instances floodwater is at least a meter high for no less than a week and hence, transplanted seedlings are already rotten when the water subsides.

Among the town’s 16 barangays, 7 have been identified by a team of Filipino researchers as low-lying areas, which serve as catch basin of neighboring municipalities, Tarlac, Pampanga, and Zambales during the wet season. Water depth reaches 1.5 meters, thereby making farmers despondent in producing rice.

Farmers stubbornly plant rice in these areas, hoping against hope that their crop would survive possible flood. In some instances, their crops barely survive floodwater and their yields are low as they are still to find a variety that may be able to survive submergence.

Submergence of rice in floodwater has been a problem of San Antonio farmers. And yet they have no recourse but to plant rice during the wet season, hoping that they will be able to harvest something for their own consumption. In the very low-lying areas, farmers have to wait for the dry season to produce a successful crop. In some areas, farmers have not planted anything in their farms during the last 10 years or so as floodwater only subsides at the middle of the dry season.

Dr. Nenita Desamero, coordinator of the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice), reported, “the low-lying rice areas … are not productive with any crop as they are fully submerged during seasons with heavy rains. In low-lying areas with poor drainage, flooding with heavy rain starts in June or July and extends to November, but may vary from September to October when typhoons and floods usually occur.

“With 2 to 3 days of heavy rain, or 3 to 4 days of light rain, fields remain submerged in August to October. With heavy rain and flood, water remains up to one month in the very low-lying areas. Sometimes, the very low-lying areas are submerged in’ December to January with very deep water, over a person’s height. The floodwater with mud called banlig is the most damaging to the crop.”

She added, farmers in the low-lying areas generally produce one successful crop in the dry season with a yield of 4-4.5 tons a hectare (t/ha). Those who attempt to raise a wet season crop usually “transplant several times during the submergence-risk period until a good crop is established in time with the recession of flood water…. When the paddies are submerged early in the wet season, farmers wait until the water recedes, and as soon as the soil becomes visible, they transplant rice even if it is already a month late, resulting in a late harvest [in] November.”

NEW HOPE
The situation in San Antonio, Nueva Ecija, however, is not an isolated case. Similar cases are found in Indonesia. Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos.

Aware of the precarious conditions of farmers in flood-prone areas, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) scientists have bred a variety that can survive, grow, and develop even after 10 days of complete submergence in murky and cloudy water.

Tagged as IR64-Sub l, the new variety is a cross of IR64 and an Indian variety with the Sub 1 gene, which makes the variety tolerant to submergence. Two other varieties with the Sub l gene, Samba Mahsuri-Sub 1 and SwarmaSubl, have been also developed elsewhere.
PhilRice and IRRI plant breeders visited the IR64-Sub1 crop of Alfonso Bayangat. From left to right are Dr. Antonio Alfonso, Dr. Nenita Desamero, IRRI Associate Scientist Alvaro Pamplona, and Dr. Gerald Ravelo.

Starting in the 2007 wet season, IRRI and PhilRice initiated collaborative efforts to test IR64-Sub 1 and three other submergence-tolerant cultivars at the PhilRice central experiment station in Maligaya, Munoz and in Barangay Papaya, San Antonio, both in Nueva Ecija.

“When we introduced the IR64-Sub 1 variety in our first consultation meeting and consultation on August 9 and 10,2007 in San Antonio, farmers, municipal agricultural officer, and agricultural technicians got excited as they saw hope in turning their idle, less productive, and always-submerged paddies into productive paddies…,” ,reported Dr. Desamero.

She added: “They became thrilled when they inquired whether the Sub 1 variety can extend its submergence tolerance up to one month, and whether it could withstand drought as well. The farmers have high hopes for the introduced IR64-Sub 1 as they hope to double their produce in times when they often harvested nothing because of heavy rain and typhoon-related flood damage. We hope that IR64-Sub 1 gene will regain its lost glory in places where it fits best and has an advantage to be cultivated in submergence-prone and flash flood-prone areas.”

In the dry season of 2008, Dr. Desamero and her fellow PhilRice researchers with the help of San Antonio agricultural technicians were able to convince Primo de Guzman of Barangay Lawang Kupang, San Antonio to plant a hectare with IR64-Sub 1.

De Guzman, 52, earlier saw the performance of IR64-Subl during a field day at PhilRice. He had so much confidence in the researchers and agricultural technicians. “It will not be recommended if it is not proven effective. I even saw it promoted on TV by IRRI,” he said.

De Guzman could hardly believe that he harvested 95 bags of seeds. These were sold to farmers at P1,200 per 40kilogram bag or at R30 per kilo during the launching of the project in San Antonio to disseminate the Sub 1 technology.

No less than Dr. Robert Ziegler, IRRI director general, was excited about the dissemination of submergence-tolerant rice. In a national forum at IRRI on the formulation of dissemination strategies for submergence- and drought tolerant rice varieties early this year, Dr. Ziegler said, “If these technologies get deployed, they can be our strongest weapons in our battle against food security.”

This collaborative work of IRRI and PhilRice is part of the project “Implementation Plans to Disseminate Submergence-tolerant Rice Varieties and Associated New Production Practices to Southeast Asia”, which is being funded by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dr. David J. Mackill, IRRI senior plant breeder, leads the project.

Noting that much has been lost due to rice submergence, Congressman Rodolfo W. Antonino of the 4th district of Nueva Ecija supports the project and encourages the farmers to be open to the use of the new rice varieties. “With the new technology, we can … make Nueva Ecija the rice granary of the Philippines,” he said.

BRIGHT PROSPECTS
The new varieties gave hope to San Antonio farmers like Armando Reyes of Poblacion, Pedro Damian and Alfonso Bayangat of Barangay Papaya, and Faustino Gante of Barangay Cama Juan.

$Fifty-seven-year-old Reyes, who got IR64-Sub 1 seeds said during the launching program that 60 percent to 70 percent of his 17-hectare farm is always submerged and left idle during the wet season. In areas where he can raise a wet season crop after the floodwater has subsided, he has been planting the hybrid rice variety Bio 401. He said the new technology gives him a fresh start. “If Submarino (1R64Subl) proves to survive this wet season, thousands of hectares in our place will be productive,” he added.

Damian, 60, got seeds of Swarna-Sub 1 as he has learned that this variety has more tillers and grains. On the other hand, Bayangat bought two bags of 1R64-Subl seeds, which he planted in his farm in Barangay Papaya. When IRRI and PhilRice researchers visited his farm, the panicles of his crop were long and heavy with grains, and were already beginning to harden.

In Barangay Cama Juan, the IR64Subl crop of Herminia Dulay was able to survive submergence, which lasted for 10 days, according to the caretaker. In V adjacent field, an NSIC Rc158 crop was also able to survive prolonged submergence but Alvaro Pamplona, associate scientist of IRRI, observed that its flowering was not uniform as the plants had great difficulty recovering the effects of submergence. In contrast, he said, IR64-Sub 1 had uniform flowering and, hence, it is expected to yield much more.

However, IR42 hardly survived submergence. Pamplona added that varieties without the Sub 1 gene may survive submergence but flower and panicle development is delayed (sometimes by 2-4 weeks) and, hence, yield is greatly decreased.

The IR64-Sub l crop of Faustino Gantc, also in Barangay Cama Juan, also had panicles already. It was transplanted barely 10 days before the rains brought by a typhoon flooded his crop for a week. The floodwater was more than a meter deep, and he already lost hope that he would still see a standing crop as experienced by other farmers in the area for the last 10 years.

Gante, a barangay councilor in Cama Juan, has not been planting rice in this field during the wet season because he often never got to harvest any grain from his crop. However, he was encouraged to plant this time because of the news that a farmer in Barangay Papaya has produced seeds of a rice line from IRRI that would survive floods for a prolonged period.

When the floodwater subsided, Gante found the newly transplanted seedlings still standing. He immediately applied nitrogen fertilizer and soon found the plants recovering.

Indeed, the wet season crop of the submergence-tolerant rice varieties has become a show window of the new technology. Soon, when the crop have been harvested and other farmers have witnessed the harvest of the innovators, they would undoubtedly begin to follow and plant at least several kilos of seeds to start with. And eventually, the 11,058 hectares in San Antonio will again become productive rice lands.