New water saving rice varities are subject to cultivation's increase plan in Egypt

Rice

Innovation & Technology

Oumaima Bahaddi

Published Jun 2, 2020

The Ministry of Agriculture has begun implementing a plan to generalize rice-saving water in Egypt to replace the traditional, voracious varieties in water consumption, as the experimental stage of the new Sakha 109 and Sakha 108 class continues with the dry cultivation method through cultivating extension fields.
the Ministry of Agriculture is currently expanding the experiences of cultivating rice that provides water through extension areas in order to overcome the problems that hinder the generalization of these new varieties, due to the high demand from farmers because they are water-saving and thus reduce the cost of agriculture compared to traditional varieties.

The indicative field for rice aims to provide agricultural information to the surrounding farmers, noting that the farms need to be inspected before making the decision to grow water-saving rice.

More in detail; the Ministry of Agriculture approved these water-saving varieties: Giza 177, Giza 178, Sakha 101, Sakha 102, Sakha 103, Sakha 104, Sakha 106, Sakha 107 and Hybrid Rice, which has a growth period of 120-135 days, and consumes About 5-6 thousand cubic meters of water per acre, and the old varieties of Giza 171, Giza 172, whose growth period is 160-170 days, were consumed, and consumed 9-10 thousand cubic meters of water per acre, thus saving 30% of the water consumption by generalizing these early varieties.

On the other hand, the farmers pointed out that the most prominent problem of water-saving rice currently is the phenomenon of weed spread, calling on the Ministry of Agriculture to expand the cultivation of drought rice as an alternative to traditional rice and to support them technically to overcoming these problems.