A Strong Plant that Fights

Rice Blast

In rice farming where yields of crops are essential as both sources of livelihood for farmers and food for a particular region, rice blast is a nightmare. It is a type of fungal disease that infects paddy crops and decreases the yield. Magnaporthe grisea is the name for the fungus that causes this disease.

Controlling Rice Blast

Spraying fungicide is a way of controlling the onset of rice blast disease. Besides that, farming practices such as planning the rice planting time based on occurrence of rain, distributing the application of nitrogen fertilizers into smaller amounts and irrigating the paddy field frequently decreases the occurrence of the rice blast pathogen.

Cross Breeding to Manage Rice Blast

Cross breeding is another technique to manage rice blast disease. A paddy plant that produces high yield, but weak against rice blast and another paddy plant that produces low yield, but naturally resistant against rice blast are cross bred to produce new generation of paddy plants that have all the desirable characteristics such as high-yielding and disease resistance. Planting these new generation of plant varieties like Primera Rice saves farmers from the hassles of managing rice blast disease and ensuring good crop yields.