Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
recurrent selection, selection for speci
c adaptability to exploit the
improvement of the potential yield performance by plant ideotype,
and the development of hybrid rice for Latin America.
Torres (2012) has suggested a clear vision for the future including
(1) improved agricultural management; (2) selection for speci
c adapta-
tion; (3) improved plant ideotype, hybrid rice and the capture of positive
alleles from wild species; and (4) the use of new biotechnology-derived
tools. However, it is necessary to continue promoting training at all
levels so that national programs can have and use the tools that bio-
technology offers to make rapid progress in the process of selecting
new genotypes.
IX. PERSPECTIVES AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Rice breeding has a long history in Latin America and has made extre-
mely important contributions for the region. Beginning in the 1930s and
1940s, several breeding programs were established in Brazil, Argentina,
and Mexico. In the 1960s, the CIAT Rice Program was created to spread
semidwarf cultivars and to train people how to grow high-yielding
semidwarf cultivars. As a result of the efforts from CIAT and its partners,
numerous cultivars were released that had extremely high-yield poten-
tial and high standards of grain quality combined with tolerance of the
main diseases and abiotic stresses. During this process, innovative
breeding methods such as population improvement were established
and consolidated. At the same time, methods for screening diseases and
other stresses were established. National programs such as EMBRAPA,
IRGA, INIA-Uruguay, and INTA became stronger and created their own
initiatives for breeding and cultivar release. CIAT and three other
countries (Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela) created FLAR, which
became the main source of elite lines for cultivar release, especially
in the tropics, and this also allowed the creation of a strong testing
network across Latin America. More recently, a new network (HIAAL)
was created to develop hybrid rice technology for Latin America. CIAT
established a platform for marker-assisted selection and created novel
populations for allele mining and gene discovery that allow the exploi-
tation of genetic resources. Tissue culture techniques such as anther
culture, embryo rescue, and genetic transformation are other tools that
CIAT scientists have developed or adapted to facilitate rice breeding in
the region. Some 402 cultivars were released from 1975 to 2012, and
these cultivars helped to raise total production to 26 million tonnes from
5.5 million hectares.
