Africa-Press – Tanzania. IN efforts to scale up production of rice in Tanzania, the Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (TARI) has collaborated with three Kenya-based institutes to carry out a project for improving livelihood among local farmers through provision of advanced agro practices and technologies.
The project involves introducing hybrid varieties that can perform well in different agro ecological zones in the country.
During an interview with the Daily News in Dodoma, Plant Researcher from TARI- Dakawa Center, Barnabas Sitta, named the partnering institutes as African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), Alliance for Hybrid Rice in Africa (AHyRA), and Hybrid East Africa Limited (HEAL).
Mr Sitta said trials for the project were being implemented in Morogoro, Tanga and Mbeya regions respectively.
“The project gears up to introduce to the farmers hybrid varieties that can enable them to yield up to 12 MT per hectare, contrary to the Open Polluted Varieties (OPV) than for long time see indigenous farmers realizing only 8 MT,” he expressed.
Moreover, Mr Sitta stated that through the initiative the farmers are trained on farm preparations, planting and spacing, application of fertilizer as well as other vital agro practices.
“Apart from that, the project also determines to understand the hybrid seeds are performing in comparison to other commercial released varieties that are already in the market,” he informed.
He said through the project, already four hybrid rice varieties are under multilocational trials in Tanzania, informed that the beat ones will later on be fowarded to the Tanzania Official Seed Certification Institute (TOSCI) for approval.
On her side, Miillicent Sedi, AATF’s Program Officer for Agricultural Business Development said in getting the beat varieties, the project was involving the farmers to perform organaleptic test, including smell and physical properties of the hybrid seed and cooked rice.
“Farmers’ feedback (after testing the hybrid varieties) is prudent in allowing us to promote the preferred varieties to commercialisation,” she observed.
The project is under the financial auspicious from Bills and Melinda Gates Foundation.
During 2019/2020, the country produced 2.2 million tons and the focus, as per the ministry of agriculture is to heighten the production to at least 4.4 million tonnes by 2030.
Tanzania’s rice records show that at least 71 of rice is grown under rainfed conditions with about half of of the county’s rice is grown by 239, 000 smallholder farmers.
Rice is grown in three major ecosystems in Tanzania, rain-fed lowland, upland, and irrigated systems. The area under rice increased from about 0.39 million hactare in 1995 to about 0.72 million hectare by 2010.
Production increased from about 0.62 million tone n 1995 to about 1.33 million tone of paddy rice in 2009 but dropped to 1.10 million tonnes in 2010.
However, average paddy yields across ecosystems have varied widely over the last 20 years (between 1.25 and 2.40 tonnes per hactare)
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