In the pre-independence and early post-independence years, Bangladesh could hardly feed its population of around 70 million with traditional varieties of rice. The country has achieved near self-sufficiency in food production, now thanks to the introduction of high yielding and hybrid varieties, use of fertilisers and modern chemical pesticides. Credit goes to the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI), which since its creation half a century back, has through its researches developed different strains of HYV rice that contributed immensely towards improving the country's food security. Notably, meanwhile, the country's food production has more than tripled over the years from a benchmark production of about 10 million tons in 1970-71. Now, to add to its credit, BRRI, of late, is learnt to have introduced two more HYV strains, namely, BRRI dhan 107 and BRRI dhan 108. According to reports, the National Seed Board (NSB) has given approval to these two HYV Boro strains thus raising the number of HYVs developed by BRRI to 115.
The salient features of one of the two new HYV strains, BRRI dhan 107, for instance, are that it has a yield potential of 8.19 tonnes per hectare and with better management under favourable conditions, which can increase up to 9.57 tonnes per hectare, the BRRI informed. The development of this premium quality balam-type high-yielding boro rice, the BRRI dhan-107, started, reportedly, through pure line selection of samples by BRRI from farmers' field in 2015. The testing of the selected pure line took place at BRRI's research fields for three years. The pure line selection, in this case, is a method in which a new variety of rice is developed through identifying and isolating a single best plant progeny from among traditional varieties. After all the testing and trial, the NSB has finally released what it called 'Latabalam' as BRRI dhan-107 as a high-yielding Boro rice for cultivation across the country.
Like the BRRI dhan 50, also known as Bangla Moti rice, developed by BRRI in 2008, BRRI 107 has an equivalent average growth period of 143 days. In this connection, it would be worthwhile to recall that in 2008, along with BRRI-50, the nation's premier crop research body, introduced three more rice varieties, namely, BRRI dhan 48, BRRI dhan 49 and BRRI hybrid dhan-2. All these varieties had special features like better yields, resistance to damage from rain and storm and disease. Also, earlier in 2006, BRRI, with the help of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), developed BRRI-47, the country's first salt-tolerant rice variety for the coastal districts where 25 per cent of the nation's rice production takes place. Later on, this version of salt-tolerant rice saw further improvement such as the one in the form of BRRI dhan-67 with higher level of salt-tolerance that enabled farmers in the southern coastal districts to cultivate rice in fields that previously remained fallow for decades. Similarly, the average yield of the strain, BRRI 108 that has also been approved by the SRB, is 8.7 tonnes per tonne. Compared to the zinc-rich strain, BRRI dhan-100, having the yield potential of 6.69 tonnes per hectare, as developed by BRRI and approved by the BSD in 2021, the BRRI dhan 108 can on an average produce 1.0 to 1.5 tonnes more rice per hectare.
There are reasons to hope that with their higher nutrient content and better yield prospects, the new HYV rice varieties so developed by BRRI would further production and enrich the diversity of the nation's chief staple, rice.
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