Farmers go against the grain

Hybrid enemy: The Clearfield strain has cross-bred with the weed-like ‘padi angin’ variety, a pest in the rice fields, making it resistant to the herbicide used by farmers.

EXCLUSIVE: PETALING JAYA: Padi farmers around the country are abandoning the supposedly “high yield’ Clearfield padi strain.

The special strain, which took seven years’ research and a grant of RM1.2mil to develop, is now a flop.

Instead of solving the problem, it amplified it, no thanks in part to greedy farmers.

Seeing its bountiful yield, they planted Clearfield more often than they were supposed to.

“The special padi plant has now cross-bred with the weedy rice or padi angin, which is considered a pest in commercial rice fields,” said Mardi’s Rice Research Centre director Dr Zainal Abidin Hassan.

“As such, the weed, also known as red rice throughout the many rice­-growing regions, is now resistant to (the herbicide) imidazolinone.

“Farmers are unable to control the weedy rice from growing, making it more expensive to maintain the field,” he said.

Clearfield or CL rice cultivar was jointly developed between the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (Mardi) and chemical giant BASF.

The strain takes a shorter time to grow, consumes less water and promises high productivity.

Clearfield yielded eight to nine tonnes of padi per hectare compared with other Malaysian rice strains, which could only produce slightly above five tonnes per hectare.

Dr Zainal said Clearfield should only be grown in two cycles in a year, with an interval of one planting season.

But farmers cashed in on the strain’s easier upkeep and planted beyond the recommended guidelines.

“Farmers took advantage of the high yield and grew it more times than what they were supposed to.

“As a result, the weed cross-bred with Clearfield.

“Clearfield transferred its herbicide-resistant trait to the weedy rice, making it a hybrid, resistance to the herbicide which is used at the beginning of the padi growing season to stem its growth,” said Dr Zainal.

He said that over 80% of the weed was now resistant to imidazolinone, based on Mardi’s two-year study at major rice-growing areas around the country.

He said Clearfield was supposed to have a lifespan of at least between 10 and 15 years before it outlived its usefulness.

“The effort and time spent to develop this hardy strain is now wasted,” said Dr Zainal.

He said that finding a new hardy variation to replace Clearfield would be a long and expensive affair.

“Clearfield was developed on a pre-existing technology. Despite that, it took seven years to be perfected.”

The same cross-breeding issue has also been demonstrated by a team of academics from Universiti Putra Malaysia, who carried out field tests and demonstrated how weedy rice could carry over the herbicide-resistant trait in one year.

Dr Zainal said that despite the unclear future of Clearfield, they were hoping to find a solution.

“We are carrying out experiments to modify the current two Clearfield variations to make it hardier and useful again. Only time will tell.”

Dr Zainal said while Mardi developed the strain, they did not keep track of who grew the crop.

But in recent years, through their observations and field studies in several private rice fields in Pahang and several other rice-growing states, they found that the padi angin was resistant to herbicide and farmers were abandoning the strain.