Durable Rice Blast Resistance for Sub-Saharan Africa

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Rice consumption in sub-Saharan Africa is growing faster than for any other crop species, driven by consumer preference and rapid urbanisation. Rice production depends predominantly on smallholder farmers and cannot meet the increasing demand for rice. Locally adapted, high yielding rice cultivars have been developed but are very sensitive to a devastating disease called rice blast. Every year, rice blast disease destroys enough rice to feed 60 million people worldwide and crop losses in Africa to this disease often exceed 60%. This project is designed to develop and deploy durable rice blast resistant rice varieties to smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. The project builds upon extensive collaboration between the project partners over the last four years through a BBSRC Sustainable Crop Production for International Development (SCPRID) award. In this previous work, we have used knowledge of the diversity of the pathogen that causes rice blast disease to guide rice breeding programmes. We have generated new, locally adapted, high yielding rice cultivars with new disease resistance specificities that are now ready to be tested across sub-Saharan Africa. In this project, we will test the reliability of the new cultivars in disease hotspots in 19 sites within 7 African countries- Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Rwanda and Madagascar. We will test if these new rice varieties are able to resist the disease in such diverse settings and different rice production systems, including upland, irrigated and rained lowland farms. We will use this information to register these varieties for free release to farmers. We will also continue to develop a pathogen surveillance programme, established by previous BBSRC funding to guide our ongoing rice breeding work in the Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya and Burkina Faso. We will breed further rice varieties in which we will incorporate different resistance specificities, guided by the prevailing blast pathogen population. Finally, but very importantly, we will undertake an extensive series of farmer engagement activities, plant disease clinics, and further development of information resources to allow rapid deployment and take-up of the new rice varieties generated in this project. We will provide practical advice immediately to farmers, allow them to be fully engaged in testing the new varieties being developed and provide a network of plant clinics to advise them on a range of disease issues. Taken together, the project will allow sustainable intensification of rice production in Africa, providing much great food security to the region and impacting on the economic wellbeing of many thousands of small holder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.