Rice Crops
Photo: Samanta Oon on Food Unfolded
INTRODUCTION TO RICE PRODUCTION
Rice is a versatile crop that can be grown in a variety of environments, 90% of the global rice supply is produced in tropical nations with high rainfall. Rice crops require a large amount of water to grow, so most farmers choose to flood their paddy fields at all times with a layer of water around 3-10 centimetres in height. In the tropics where there are seasons of heavy rainfall, the water for paddy fields often come from irrigation systems that are linked to nearby dams and rivers. World production of rice has risen steadily from about 200 million tonnes of paddy rice in 1960 to over 678 million tonnes in 2009. The three largest producers of rice in 2009 were China (197 million tonnes), India (131 Mt), and Indonesia (64 Mt). Among the six largest rice producers, the most productive farms for rice, in 2009, were in China producing 6.59 tonnes per hectare[10].
The Economic Potential of Rice Production
Nigeria is the second-largest importer of rice in the world, buying at least two million metric tons per year from exporting countries like China and Thailand[7]. According to the FAO rice generates more income for Nigerian farmers than any other crop.
The demand for rice has been on the increase since mid-1970 (Awe, 2006; Daramola, 2005). During the 1960s, Nigeria had a per capita annual rice consumption of 3 kg which increased to an average of 18 kg during the 1980s, reaching 22 kg in the latter half of the 1990s (FAO, 2002; Akpokodje et al., 2001). Since the mid-1980s, rice consumption has increased at an average annual rate of 11% with only 3% explained by population growth. Also, within the decade of the 1990s, Erenstein et al. (2004) reported a 14% annual increase in the demand for rice in Nigeria. The substitution of rice for coarse grains and traditional roots and tubers shifted the demand for rice to an average annual growth rate of 5.6% between 1961 and 1992 (Osiname, 2002).
In 2004 the Federal government launched the presidential initiative on rice to address the widening demand-supply gap and the attainment self-sufficiency in rice production. This was followed up with the National Rice Development Strategy in 2009 aimed at doubling rice production in Nigeria from 3.4 million metric tons in 2008 to 12.85 metric tons in 2018 by annually increasing the land area by 300,000 hectares.
The policy sought to transform Nigeria into self-sufficiency under the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA). The rice implementation action plan involved the establishment or improvement – where the mills already exist, to the milling capacity of rice and by 2015, the Nigerian government’s plan was to ban all rice imports and become self-sufficient
The general constraints affecting rice production include the following:
- Unreliability of rainfall
- Yield losses caused by low solar radiation owing to clouds during August in West Africa (Posner, 1978)
- Extremes of temperature (<20oC and > 35oC) which result in yield losses in Madagascar, Central, East, and southern Africa;
- Unfavorable government policies in Nigeria that affect agriculture in general and rice in particular with regard to the following: resource allocation; cropping priorities; provision of adequate credits: interest rates; creation of incentives and input subsidies; pricing and marketing
- Importation: Inconsistencies in government policies on the regulation of the importation of rice. The production capacity of Nigeria is far below the national requirements. In order to meet the increasing demand, Nigeria has had to resort to importation of milled rice to bridge the gap between domestic demand and supply. There was a phenomenal rise in imports since the mid-1970s. However, rice imports began to decline in 1981 as a result of measures put in place to check the importation of the commodity. Even then, the quantity imported on an annual basis was over 300 thousand tons. Imports dropped significantly from 1985 when an embargo was instituted.
Improved varieties
New Rice for Africa (“NERICA”) varieties, a cross between African and Asian rice, are being hailed as a “miracle crop” that can bring Africa its long-promised green revolution in rice. It has the following advantage over the local varieties:
- Early maturity (by 50–70 days) earlier than farmers varieties
- Resistance to local stresses (blast, stem borers, termites)
- High yield advantage (up to 6 tonnes per hectare under favorable conditions)
- Higher protein content (by 25%)
- Good taste
- Early maturing (within 80–100 days; i.e. 50–70 days earlier than farmers’ varieties)
Local rice varieties in Nigeria enjoy reasonable patronage due to its more palatability over the foreign rice. Famous among these local rice is the Ofada rice popular in the South West, Abakaliki in the South East among others. Though, the level of patronage cannot compare with foreign rice. Ofada is noted for its sweet taste while Abakaliki’s soaring patronage is attributed to its distinctive taste.
Rice has become a strategic food security crop in Nigeria today with the country being the largest producer and consumer in West Africa, producing an average of 3.4 million metric tons (MT) of paddy rice, equivalent to 1.8 million metric tons of milled rice (Daramola 2005; UNEP 2005). Rice grows in all the agro-ecological zones as diverse as the Sahel of Borno state and the coastal swamps of the southwest and south-south. Nigeria is endowed with favorable ecologies for rice cultivation. Virtually all the rice-growing ecologies (the upland irrigated, inland valley swamp, deep water floating and tidal mangrove swamp) abound in Nigeria.
In spite of the fact that rice is cultivated in virtually all the agro-ecological zones in Nigeria, the area cultivated with rice is still small (1.8 million hectares out of 5 million hectares). An estimate of locally produced milled rice for the year 2008 was 1.8 million MT against a demand of 5 million MT (NRDS, 2009)[13].
Harvesting
Image by Bubbers
According to FAO, before you harvest, the grains should be full but not cracking, with yellow hulls, and the stalks of the plant should be slightly bent. It could take anywhere from 3 to 6 for rice to reach this stage.
To harvest rice, farmers need to drain, cut and dry.
The first step of harvesting is draining the paddy. Next, farmers cut the plants — with a scythe or sickle if by hand — and transport them elsewhere to be laid out and dried for two or three days. Rice can be cut by hand or machine
It takes a lot of time to harvest rice by hand: 80 to 160 hours per hectare, or 198 to 395 hours per acre, according to the FAO. By machine, rice might take around 2.7 to 4.5 hours per hectare, or 6.7 to 11 hours per acre, to harvest. Depending on the region, and the access to machinery, mechanised cutting is becoming increasingly popular.
After the rice has been cut and laid out to dry, it must be threshed.
Threshing separates the grain from the stalk, this process can also be done by hand or with a machine. One common method of threshing is slamming sheaves of against a table with slots in it. The banging dislodges the grains, which fall through the cracks in the table to a collection area below.
When harvested, rice has around 25 percent moisture content, but after it is threshed, it needs to dry to about 14 percent water content in order to be safe for storing and milling. The process of milling removes the husk, bran layer and germ, and results in what we know as white rice. Brown rice is not milled, which explains its relative heartiness compared to white rice
POST-HARVEST MANAGEMENT
Image by Stan Edom
Seed cleaning
- Hand thresh or process harvested panicles with a self-cleaning thresher (Vogel type).
- Clean grains initially by blowing off inert matter, weed seed and half-filled grains and then transfer to net bags along with two shipping tags marked with the plot number and date of harvest.
- Clean and select seed manually at 40–50% RH and 22°C to eliminate poor quality seeds and off-types.
Seed drying
- Place seeds in the drying facility at 15°C and 15% RH for about 1 week to bring them to 8–10% moisture content. Alternatively, air-dry them for 3–4 weeks in a well-ventilated room, preferably with electric fans and dehumidifiers under 15–25°C to bring them to 11–13% moisture content.
- Transfer dry seeds to paper bags for another round of seed blowing.
- Verify harvest against the seed file and discard if unmatched.
- Place seeds in the drying facility for another week to achieve 5–8% moisture content while awaiting viability and seed-health test results. Alternatively, incubate seeds over 4–8 weeks under 20–25°C in a glass jar with an equal amount of activated silica gel or appropriate desiccant that is changed two or three times during the drying period upon colour change of indicator.
Seed testing
- Perform a viability test on 100 seeds (pre-incubated at 50°C for 5 days and room temperature for 2 to 3 days to break dormancy) with two replicates on moist paper towels under ambient temperature and 12/12 hour light/dark condition. Score viability after 7 and 14 days following ISTA rules.
- Test seed health following standard procedures and discard infected seeds.
- Determine moisture content by oven-method (130°C for 2 hours) on a 5g sample following ISTA rules.
Seed packaging
- Select seeds that are at 5–8% moisture content, clean, free from pests and with >85% viability and divide into base, active and/or duplication collections for conservation in aluminium foil or paper envelopes.
- Place seeds in paper envelopes in jars containing 30% silica gel.
- At IRRI, each accession is stored in: 1) Base collection with up to two 60-g samples in an aluminium can; 2) Active collection with two to five 10-g samples and one 500-g sample in aluminium foil; and 3) Duplicate set with two 15-g samples in aluminium foil.
- Store the base collection in long-term conditions at -20 to -18°C, and the active collection in a medium-term room at +5 to +25°C.
Processing of Rice
Rice, when it is still covered by the brown hull, is known as paddy; rice fields are also called paddy fields or rice paddies. Before marketing, the rice is threshed to loosen the hulls (mainly by flailing, treading, or working in a mortar) and winnowed free of chaff by tossing it in the air above a sheet or mat. This local method that characterizes rice processing, leading to reduced quality causing the rapid appraisal of imported rice customer. Preferences confirmed that imported rice cleanliness is the overwhelming factor explaining the expansion of imported rice consumption in Nigeria at the cost of local rice market development.
Nigerians quest, to attaining self-sufficiency in rice production by 2015, can only be achieved through transforming rice harvesting and processing using modern rice processing mills. Which are equipped with thresher to reduce the drudgery associated with manual harvesting of paddies and the winnowers to removes unwanted elements, such as stones. To gain further insight into the actual rice market in Nigeria click here to read the dynamics of the Nigerian paddy market.
For more information contact: senceagric@senceworld.com
References
[1] https://www.infoplease.com/
[2] International Rice Research Institute The Rice Plant and How it Grows. knowledgebank.irri.org
[3] https://www.shilpaagro.com/
[4] https://www.knowledgebank.irri.org
[6]Culled from: www.fao.org (Rice production in Africa: current situation and issues)
[7] https://www.nigeriamarkets.org
[9] https://www.businessdayonline.com
[10] “World Wheat, Corn and Rice”. Oklahoma State University, FAOSTAT.
[11] https://www.africarice.org
[12] Daramola B. (2005): Government Policies and Competitiveness of Nigerian Rice Economy. A Paper presented at the `Workshop on Rice Policy & Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa’ organized by WARDA, Cotonou, Republic of Benin, November 07-09.
[13] National Rice Development Strategy (2009): Coalition for African Rice Development (CARD).
[14] Culled from: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rice-harvesting_n_6021266
[15 ]https://cropgenebank.sgrp.cgiar.org/index.php/122-rice/regeneration23/357-cultivated-rice
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