Alex Rice Videos : 'Green Super Rice' About Two Years Away for Asia, Africa

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'Green Super Rice' About Two Years Away for Asia, Africa

I'm Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, from voaspecialenglish.com | http Scientists have worked for twelve years to develop what they call Green Super Rice. They say several varieties should be available to farmers about two years from now in parts of Asia and Africa.The "green" in Green Super Rice means environmentally friendly. Researchers say it will produce at least as much grain as other rice plants but with fewer inputs. "Super" means the rice is designed to better resist droughts, floods, salty water, insects and disease.The developers of Green Super Rice did not use genetic engineering. Instead, they mated hundreds of varieties of rice. That way they avoided the costs as well as the problems connected with getting permission to plant genetically engineered crops.The project involves the world's largest rice collection, the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. It also involves the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. And it includes farmers in eight countries in Asia and eight in Africa. Modern rice plants produce two to three times more grain than was possible before the nineteen sixties. But they also require large amounts of water, chemical fertilizers and pesticides. In the nineteen sixties, the International Rice Research Institute developed "miracle rice" for Asia. Scientists created high-yielding crops that produced bigger harvests in what became known as the Green Revolution. It prevented widespread ...

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