RIcE

Rice is the vital food crop as half of the world’s population eats rice as main part of their diets. Rice ranks second only to wheat in terms of area harvested. It provides more calories than any other cereal grain. In Pakistan medium or coarse grain rice is grown mostly in Sindh, while the fine grain aromatic rice crop is cultivated in Punjab. Foreign exchange is earned by export of rice annualy. Grain is commonly used in different forms of human diet. Besides, the straw provides animal feed and industrial raw material. There has been gradual increase in area under the rice cultivation, annual production and yield per hectare. Despite, Pakistan lags behind in obtaining yield per unit area in comparison to many other rice growing countries.

Rice being a diploid species offers many opportunities for the exploitation of induced mutations. Mutation breeding work for the improvement of rice varieties was initiated in 1960s with local tall rice cultivars. With introduction of semi-dwarf varieties from IRRI, efforts were diverted to improve these new cultivars. The NIA has been successful in evolving four non-aromatic and two aromatic rice mutant varieties.