The government has been promoting the short-duration and drought-tolerant rice variety of Nerica paddy by distributing incentives such as seeds and fertiliser to farmers during the ongoing T-Aman season.
However, the Nerica paddy, brought from Africa, reportedly has a negative reputation among both farmers and agriculture specialists, who say field trials have failed to produce any significant yield.
The Agriculture Ministry has allocated around Tk5.5 core to distribute seed and fertiliser for cultivating the Nerica paddy at 50,000 bigha of land in 31 districts.
“We have already distributed 10kg of Nerica seed to each farmer for one bigha of land as free of cost,” said Mominul Haq, additional general manager (seed) of Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation (BADC). He added that the BADC would also provide 20kg of diammonium phosphate (DAP) and 10kg of muriate of potash (MoP) chemical fertiliser as incentive for each bigha of land.
However, a researcher of Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI), seeking anonymity, told the Dhaka Tribune that the government has been promoting the imported varieties despite having bad result of the paddy in the field.
The Nerica paddy – imported in 2009 – has not brought any extraordinary positive result at all kinds of field trials like Aush, Aman and Boro, the researcher said, adding that none of the field trial resulted in rice production of more than 3 tonnes of paddy per hectare.
New Rice for Africa, or Nerica, is a cultivar group of inter-specific hybrid rice developed by the Africa Rice Centre.
The BRRI has already invented several drought-tolerant paddy varieties that include BR 20, BR 21, BR 24 and BRRI 42, BRRI 43, BRRI 56 and BRRI 57.
None of these variety is yet to see comprehensive promotional measures from the government, the BRRI researcher said, claiming that these locally-invented varieties would bring more positive results in terms of production because of their adaptation capacity in the local climate.
Regarding the local drought-tolerance varieties for T-Aman season, Jibon Krishna Biswas, director general of BRRI, told the Dhaka Tribune that BRRI 56 and BRRI 57 were so far the best drought-tolerant varieties in the country.
These varieties have the capacity to produce 4.5 tonne to 5 tonne of rice per hectare on an average, compared to only a maximum of 4 tonne of paddy by the Nerica variety depending on soil, weather and season, he added.
On the other hand, Rafiqul Hasan, deputy director (monitoring) of the Department of Agriculture, told the Dhaka Tribune that the government is giving the incentive to Nerica farmers for boosting rice production in the country as the variety was drought-tolerant and high yielding.
Apart from the incentives for Nerica, the government has also been providing incentive worth around Tk4.5 crore to the farmers cultivating high yielding varieties (HYV) at 51,722 bigha of land in 21 districts.
Regarding HYV, each farmer cultivating one bigha of land has been receiving 5kg of seed, 20kg of DAP and 10kg of MoP fertiliser.
After Boro, Aman is the second highest rice crop in Bangladesh regarding production. In 2013-14 fiscal, the production of T-Aman in the country was around 128 lakh tonne, while Boro production was 189 lakh tonne.