Sector hoping for big returns from new rice variety

The Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) is anticipating big things from its most recent variety of rice on trial in the sector across the country.

A GRDB source told this newspaper earlier this week that initial indications are that the new variety could even outperform the GRDB 10, which is performing favourably and which occupies around 42 per cent of the approximately 230,000 acres of rice lands across the country.

The new candidate variety which was developed at the local rice research institution at Burma on the West Coast Berbice, comes at a time when Guyana, among other rice producing countries, is seeking to maximize food production in response to widespread predictions of a global food crisis.

The GRDB source told Stabroek Business that it takes four to five years between the development of a new variety and introducing it at the trial stage.