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Molecular Plant Breeding 2011, Vol.2, No.11, 75
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http://mpb.sophiapublisher.com
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Research Letter Open Access
NERICA: A Hope for Fighting Hunger and Poverty in Africa
Tondi Yacouba Nassirou , Yuqing He
National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, P.R. China
Corresponding author email:
yqhe@mail.hzau.edu.cn
;
Author
Molecular Plant Breeding, 2011, Vol.2 No.11 doi: 10.5376/mpb.2011.02.00011
Received: 25, May., 2011
Accepted: 19, Jun., 2011
Published: 04, Jul., 2011
This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article:
Nassirou and He, 2011, NERICA: A Hope for Fighting Hunger and Poverty in Africa, Molecular Plant Breeding Vol.2 No.11 (doi: 10.5376/mpb.2011.02.0011)
Abstract
NERICA (new rice for Africa), a new promising African upland rice species, is getting into the limelight in West-Africa,
it has been developed through crossing African rice species (known for resistant to disease and drought) and Asian rice species (for
its high yield potential) with the assistance from Japan, UNDP and other organizations. Its varieties are being hailed as a “miracle
crop” that can bring Africa its long-promised green revolution in rice that is why a powerful coalition of governments, research
institutes, private seed companies and donors are leading a major effort to spread NERICA seeds to all the continent’s rice fields. At
first, the NERICA researchers insisted that they did not intend NERICA to replace local diversity. Indeed, the incorporation of new
seeds is nothing new for African farmers because as usual, new varieties are often mixed with old ones and become part of the
selection process, contributing to the local genetic heritage, and now it is perfectly adapted to the harsh growing environment and
low-input conditions of upland rice ecologies in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where smallholder farmers lack the means to irrigate and
apply chemical fertilizers or pesticides and it responds even better to higher inputs. This promising new rice for Africa combine high
yield, short duration, resistance to pest and diseases, more protein and amino-acid content, iron and zinc, and an acceptable taste, and
since its creation so far, NERICA has carved a special niche for itself among upland rice farmers in SSA: today, it is a symbol of
hope for food security in the SSA and as the Africa rice center declares with pride on its web pages, the New Rice for Africa, a
technology from Africa for Africa, has become a symbol of hope for food security in a region of the world where one-third of the
people are undernourished and half the population struggle to survive on US$1 a day or less; also the Africa rice center
director-general Papa Abdoulaye Seck comments, “NERICA is a powerful weapon on Africa’s fight against hunger and poverty”.
Keywords
NERICA; Sub-Saharan Africa; Embryo rescue; Rice
Background
Food is the most basic human need. At low levels of
income, the utmost concern for the human being is to
meet the energy needs to overcome hunger. Cereals
(like rice) provide the cheapest source of energy.
Rice is the most staple food crop in world, so it does
in Africa where it is the most rapidly growing food
source but largely grown on small family farms. It has
a long and varied history in Africa. African farmers
probably domesticated this grain at the same time as
Asian farmers (about 3 000 years ago). African far-
mers developed the species
Oryza glaberrima
, while
Asian farmers developed
Oryza sativa
.
Oryza
sativa
was introduced to Africa about 500 years ago, and
peasants there have adapted it to their rice production
systems, developing many local varieties of the Asian
species and turning Africa into an important secondary
source of diversity. West Africa was dependant on rice
as their primary source of food energy and protein, but
the majority of Africa’s rice was imported.
There was the need for the national agricultural
research system to develop suitable packages for
farmers to enhance the performance of the rice crop to
mitigate the threats, for a fresh generation of agri-
cultural technologies; it was a call from Ban KI-moon,
the UN secretary, to usher in a second green revo-
lution, one which permits sustainable yield improve-
ments with minimal environmental damage and con-
tributes to sustainable development goals.
Following the Africa rice center (ex. WARDA) was
formed with an objective to produce a rice variety
which was better suited to harsh conditions in Africa.
In 1991 a research team from Africa rice center leaded