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Disease-Resistant Rice Varieties

Jefferson, a new semidwarf rice variety, hit the market only last year but is already popular among southern farmers who must contend with fungus-caused rice diseases such as leaf blast and sheaf blight.

For an encore, Agricultural Research Service scientists who developed Jefferson have just released another new rice variety --Madison, which has multiple disease resistance, like Jefferson, but matures 9 days later in the season.

Madison is ready for harvest about 120 days after seedlings emerge. That's similar to other leading commercial varieties, says ARS geneticist Anna M. McClung, who heads rice research at Beaumont, Texas.

Because early-planted Jefferson and Madison mature by mid- or late July, farmers may produce a second harvest from the ratoon crop --new growth sprouting from the flooded stubble. Ratoon yields can be a third to half the main crop about 60 days after the first harvest.

Commercial seed companies can obtain foundation Madison seed through the Texas Rice Improvement Association. More than 270,000 pounds of Jefferson, worth over $200,000, were sold to seedsmen for planting in the 1997 and 1998 growing seasons. This year, an estimated 75,000 of the 270,000 acres of rice in Texas were planted to Jefferson.

In Uniform Rice Regional Nursery tests, Madison, produced long-grain rice with July crop yields similar to Jefferson. Its milling quality was found to be similar to Jefferson, Cypress, and Gulfmont varieties. ARS released Madison jointly with state agricultural experiment stations in Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. --By Ben Hardin, Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.

Anna M. McClung is in the USDA-ARS Rice Research Unit, 1509 Imes Rd., Beaumont, TX 77713; phone (409) 752-5221, fax (409) 752-5720.

"Disease-Resistant Rice Varieties" was published in the August 1998 issue of Agricultural Research magazine. Click here to see this issue's table of contents.

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