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Uganda courts China to boost rice production potential
A delegation of NARO officials was last week in China to discuss a collaboration with BGI Group in which the two seek to forge strategic partnerships to enhance production and expertise in the rice ecosystem. Photo / Courtesy
What you need to know:
- The National Agricultural Research Organisation collaboration also seeks to reduce rice imports in the coming years
The National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) is banking on a collaboration with China to place Uganda as a leading rice producer in East Africa and Africa as a whole.
The collaboration will also be key in boosting food security and reducing rice imports in the coming years.
Rice is the seventh most imported food item in Uganda with the import value averaging $109m (Shs398.3b) annually.
Uganda largely imports rice from, Tanzania, which contributes an import value of ($108m), South Korea ($1.14m), India ($354,000), United Arab Emirates ($249,000), and China ($106,000).
However, NARO has embarked on a research collaboration with Chinese partners in which it seeks to forge strategic partnerships to enhance production and expertise in the rice eco-system.
Dr Yona Baguma, the NARO director general, who led a six-member delegation to China for a week-long collaboration with leading rice research and production institutions, among them Yunnan University and BGI Group, a renowned life science and genomics organisation with two decades of rice research experience, said through the partnership, Uganda and China would lead one of the most significant food revolutions in the world as rice continues to be a principle food security crop across the globe.
"NARO and BGI have embarked on a groundbreaking collaboration to harness perenniality in crops, especially rice, enabling farmers to harvest from the same crop for up to five years,” he said, noting that perennial rice allows at least 15 harvests from a single planting, reducing input costs such as seeds and labour while improving soil stability.
In October, BGI Group chief executive officer Yin Ye, was in Uganda where he formalised a partnership with NARO to elevate rice as a cornerstone of food security, nutrition, and income generation.
Therefore, Dr Baguma said, the visit to China sought to solidify plans for establishing an Africa Regional Perennial Rice Technology Centre in Uganda, whose groundbreaking was conducted during Dr Ye's visit in October.
The centre, he said, will serve as a hub for research, training, and dissemination of perennial rice technologies across Africa
Uganda, home to 65 types of wild rice, offers a strong foundation for developing new, high-yielding, disease-resistant, and climate-smart rice varieties.
Prof Zhang Shilai, the Yunnan University deputy dean at the Institute of Plant Resources, said the collaboration will include breeding programmes and demonstration sites for perennial rice in Uganda, which reduces labour needs, eliminates transplanting and tillage, saves seeds, and increases carbon storage.
NARO has already developed five perennial rice varieties.
The partnership will also create opportunities for Ugandan students to study and conduct rice research in China.
