Hybrid rice varieties must to ensure food security

MULTIPLE rice varieties are needed to ensure food security in any country and SunLand Agri-Tech Pte Ltd said its high-yield varieties can help bring Brunei closer to its goal of being self-sufficient in the commodity.

In an e-mail interview, David Chen, SunLand's project manager stationed in Brunei, said that the Brunei government has also mentioned plans on introducing other high-yield rice varieties to compliment the Laila rice as multiple varieties are needed to ensure food security.

"These on-going projects can only affect the rice self-sufficiency programme in the most positive way," said Louis Kek, managing director of SunLand. Laila has a lot of potential but this can't be met until critical factors such as infrastructure are addressed, he said.

With the natural ability of hybrid rice varieties to generate high yield, Kek said they have the pre-requisites needed to make hybrid rice a success in the Brunei market.

In line with the company's mission of propagating "the Tropical Hybrid Rice Miracle around the world, filling the world's rice bowl", SunLand sees Brunei as a strategic place to fulfil this mission since there is a need here.

The managing director added that the development and research work they have done in Brunei with the support of the government gave encouraging results leading their management team to establish headquarters in Brunei.

"Hybrid rice technology has been around for a long time. We are pioneering and bringing this technology to the next phase in tropical countries such as Brunei," Kek said, adding that they are currently in a phase of using the hybrid technology to cross varieties that are not only high in yield, but in quality, taste and rice aroma.

The founder also stated that the varieties selected for crossing may include some of the local varieties. This will ensure the resulting hybrid is suitable to the local environment which has been done in across Asia and African countries.

"Being successful in this, we then can ensure assistance for farmers to address the market (demand) accordingly. With (more) choices, we are confident farmers will find one that suits them. In addition to that, we do direct knowledge transfer to every country we go, which gives the company a lot of positive feedback," Kek said, adding that the support received by the Brunei government has been strong, which makes it easy to set up a seed production headquarters.

In an earlier interview, Chen said the venture will reap mutual benefits for both the company and Brunei.

Brunei harvested its first yield of the SAT-07 hybrid rice under the Hybrid Rice Development Programme which is a joint collaboration between the Agriculture Department and the Singaporean-based company, SunLand, on November 1.

The Agriculture Department is working towards increasing the present 3.12 per cent self-sufficiency to 20 per cent in 2010 and 60 per cent by 2015, through the production of rice.

The Brunei Times