Development Of The First Organic Saline Tolerant Rice Varieties

Sea coastal tracts often confront the combined menace of salinity and flood. Compared to any other development approach, breeding for salt stress tolerance is a more promising, energy efficient, economic, and socially acceptable approach. Varieties having traits amenable for organic farming (organic varieties) are the missing link in the organic production chain. Here we report development and commercial release of four saline tolerant organic rice varieties which are first of its kind, christened as ‘Ezhome -1’ , ‘Ezhome -2’, ‘Ezhome -3’ and ‘Ezhome -4’. They are also non lodging, high yielding, and having good cooking and nutritional qualities. They are suited to saline flooded sea coastal ecosystem as well as non-saline tracts. The varieties were developed by adopting conventional breeding linked with novel strategies of organic plant breeding and participatory plant breeding, and growing the entire filial generations and all yield trials in the problem area of farmers.