Abstract

Rice is a very important crop feeding half of the world population. Its importance is becoming increasingly high due to high nutritive value and high returns per given land area than any other cereal crop. However, its production is facing major challenges such as degraded soil, need for high grain quality, population growth, high input costs, climate change and variability threats and plateauing yields. There is now more urgent need to think about how to increase rice yield to feed an ever growing population, and this is largely to come from increased yields per given land area, rather than expansion of new area and committing them for rice production. More importantly, the reproductive resource is under threat and thus this increased productivity must enhance the conservation of the productive land resource base for sustainability. This article explores some of the avenues available to meet some of the challenges.

Key words: Climate change, growing population, rice (Oryza sativa).