International partnership for rice improvement in Latin America: CIRAD, a case study
Marc Châtel1 and Elcio Perpétuo Guimarães
In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), rice is an important staple food. A significant increase in rice production has been achieved mainly through the release and adoption of high yielding varieties. During the last 40 years, about 300 varieties were released. They were developed by national and international rice research institutions. The Centre for International Cooperation in Agricultural Research for Development, Food Crop Department (CIRAD-CA), in Montpellier, France, worked in collaboration with Embrapa Rice and Beans, Goiânia, Brazil, and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Cali, Colombia, in the development of varieties for LAC. This study looks at the contribution made by CIRAD’s international partnership to rice improvement, with emphasis in Latin America. The presence of CIRAD’s lines was detected in the breeding programs in Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala and Peru. The following results were obtained: a) 61 unique lines developed by CIRAD were used as parents in more than 2,000 crosses in the region; b) five CIRAD’s lines were directly released as commercial cultivars; c) 25 varieties released to farmers in the region have at least one line from CIRAD participating on its crosses; and d) six breeding lines are in the pipeline for release in Brazil, Colombia, Nicaragua and Peru.