With organic rice in demand, scientists to help farmers improve production

Organic rice is increasingly desired by U.S. customers, but farmers understand that increasing the grain free can mean providing a feast for insects, diseases and weeds. That's the reason why the U.S. Department of Agriculture has placed $1 million on a multi-state group of scientists with a track record of fighting bugs toward the goal of creating organic rice rewarding for farmers and much more available for customers. organic rice price grant also establishes the first Center of Excellence for organic rice research in the U.S. "Organic rice is important to the U.S., and most of the organic rice acreage is located in the southern growing area and California," said Dr. Xin-Gen"Shane"" Zhou, Texas A&M AgriLife Research plant pathologist at Beaumont and project leader. "Organic rice acreage has increased to approximately 50,000 acres in the country. In contrast, conventional rice acreage is on the decline. Though the price farmers get for organic rice is almost double what they get for conventionally grown rice,'' Zhou said, making an adequate yield of superior rice organically is tough. "Very little study was done on organic rice, and organic studies on other crops don't apply to rice because -- unlike other crops -- most of it is grown in flooded fields," he said. "That subjects rice to a different spectrum of weeds, disease and insect pests in relation to dryland or irrigated crops." organic rice high quality assisted the scientists identify nutrient control, pest management and rice types as the main should earn organic rice production economically viable. The group on the study comprises plant pathologists, breeders, crop nutrient managers, researchers, weed scientists, entomologists and outreach specialists from Texas, Arkansas and Washington, D.C. Research on organic rice has been in progress in the AgriLife Research facility in Beaumont for at least five decades, Zhou said, also results from those studies, combined with some in other locations, will probably be parlayed to the new research. "We developed this new proposal to further develop profitable methods for rice farmers," he said. "We surveyed organic farmers and found the major problems were weed control, nitrogen supply and stand establishment. In rice systems, we are not supposed to use any chemical, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides or insecticides, so that definitely causes a lot of stress for its organic farmers." For instance, farmers might love to use less nitrogen fertilizer, because organic fertilizers are considerably more expensive in comparison to conventional fertilizers. But applying organic nitrogen improperly can give the weeds a chance to grow and compete with rice plants,'' he explained. Also, diseases not generally found in conventional rice are more severe from the rice, Zhou added. The research farm in Beaumont is suitable for the study, Zhou noted, since it fulfilled the criteria to be certified organic in 2012 and continues to be preserved as such since. organic rice stock team intends to create a strategy for organic rice production at the completion of the study and will develop an online economic evaluation tool with interactive budgets to help farmers make decisions for their organic rice production. They also will have on-farm demonstration trials in Texas, Missouri, Florida and South Carolina. "We will have direct connection with organic rice farmers to show them what kind of management practices or resources they can use for managing pests and for yield increase," Zhou said. "Rice is significant to the world, along with the acreage dedicated to rice is really too little from the U.S. compared to the rice acreage from other countries. That's why the possible impact of this project is so important."