A new upland rice variety for the highlands of Madagascar

In Madagascar, rice is both the main crop and the staple food for the local population, with an annual per capita consumption figure of more than 120 kilos. The highlands region is densely populated, and its farmers traditionally grow irrigated rice. However, there is no land left to set up new irrigated rice fields. Developing upland rice in the hills ("tanety"), which are generally used for maize, beans, sweet potatoes and cassava or to graze zebus, has thus emerged as a possible way of boosting rice production.

The lack of a sufficiently cold-tolerant upland rice variety that could be grown at heights of more than 1200 m above sea level, thus led to the establishment, in the mid-1980s, of a varietal creation programme for high-altitude upland rice, associating FOFIFA and CIRAD. Since then, more than fifteen cold-tolerant upland rice varieties have been bred and launched on the market, FOFIFA 173 being the latest. These varieties have served to push the threshold for upland rice growing over 1800 m above sea level.
Thanks to these varieties, high-altitude upland rice growing has developed very rapidly, particularly in the Vakinankaratra region, along the famous RN7 road between the towns of Antsirabe and Ambatolampy (70 km north), where research and dissemination efforts have been concentrated. Upland rice is now an integral part of the landscape in the highlands region, and in places, it is even the dominant crop in upland cropping systems.

Varietal creation needs to continue, to support this development and broaden the range of available varieties so as to ensure the sustainability of high-altitude upland rice production by taking on board several objectives such as resistance to rice blast fungus, nitrogen uptake efficiency, diversification of grain quality, cold tolerance and adaptation to farming systems developed as part of a conservation agriculture strategy.