Cultivation of hybrid rice was being done to popularise growing varieties, for which farmers could not use their own seeds, Virmani of International Rice Research Institute, Philippines, told reporters here.
Though the concept of cultivating hybrid was common in other crops like sunflower, sorghum and bajra, it was new for rice since farmers so far had been using their own seeds, he said.
India had introduced high-yielding rice varieties under irrigated conditions following the green revolution, but the yield had been constant for the last 20 years despite breeders coming up with better resistant varieties.
There was a need to grow more hybrids, since agricultural lands were being used for more non-agricultural purposes, while the population, especially in Asia, was on the rise, he said.
Virmani said while farmers in India were not used to cultivating hybrids, in China 50 per cent of the rice area was under hybrid cultivation.
Icar had taken up the project of growing more hybrids in association with IRRI and with funds from UNDP, he said.
There were 12 centres, including Tamil Nadu Agricultural University here, which had taken up the project.This was the fifth year of the project and IRRI was trying to find out ways to reach technology transfer faster to farmers.
Though the cost of the hybrid seeds were higher, cultivation of hybrid seeds was economically viable as the yield was higher, he said.
One of the constraints in growing hybrids was that the next generation of seeds could not be used and they had to be produced from the parental line.
Some entrepreneurs had shown interest in producing the seeds and IRRI was trying to establish a concept for cultivating the hybrids, he said.
Virmani said IRRI was trying to work out the problem of hybrid restraint being produced as second generation of the hybrid.
The institute was working on introducing a gene in hybrids to help farmers use their own seeds, instead of, going in for purchase of new seeds for each hybrids.
Tamil Nadu Agricultural University vice-chancellor A Abdul Kareem, who was present, said the IRRI was trying to help production of seeds of the shorter duration hybrid variety - CORH1, which is better known as `MGR
