KLANG: In a bid to increase their yields, some rice farmers have resorted to buying hybrid seeds from China online despite the fact that the practice is not permitted without proper endorsement.
Sekinchan rice farmer Yap Kam Phua said some 100 farmers in the district were already doing this and enjoying a harvest that is more than double their previous yield.
“We can reach up to 14 tonnes per hectare with the hybrid padi seeds but it is quite expensive and costs about RM30 to RM40 per kilogram. Local varieties cost only RM65 for a 25kg sack,’’ Yap said in an interview.
Another Sekinchan farmer, Mohd Asri Badron, said some farmers were also buying a variety of non-hybrid seeds from another neighbouring country.
“They are buying the padi seeds online and are paying up to RM60 per kg to increase their yields,” said Mohd Asri.
In our own backyard: Noraziyah says there are many local experts who can create padi seed variants.
However, the irony is that the seeds had originated from a Malaysian species, he added.
“They took the seeds from here and upgraded them to suit their terrain, climate and soil, and they are now being bought and used by Malaysian farmers,” said Mohd Asri.
Sekinchan assemblyman Datuk Ng Suee Lim, who is playing a pivotal role in upgrading his constituency’s rice production, said farmers may have resorted to sourcing their own padi seeds because the ones from the Malaysian Agriculture Research and Development Institute (Mardi) did not meet their expectations.
“They feel the seeds from Mardi are old and have been kept for years and the yield from them is not encouraging. The plants were also found to be unresistant to the various diseases that attack padi,” said Ng.
“So, Mardi needs to be more proactive and obtain high-yield seeds from neighbouring countries to examine and see if they can be improved for domestic use.
“They have to think outside the box and initiate a paradigm shift. They may need to meet with all the stakeholders to get their opinion,’’ said Ng.
Farmers who want to bring in seeds from other countries have to first obtain permission from the Agriculture Department for plant materials, and the seeds must also be quarantined before use, said Dr Noraziyah Abd Aziz Shamsudin, of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s (UKM) Biological Sciences and Biotechnology Department.
She said although the hybrid seeds from China could increase yields, they came with their own drawbacks.
“Farmers must first understand the difference between hybrid and inbred seeds,” said Noraziyah.
“Hybrid seeds can only be used for one generation or season and new seeds have to be bought each time for replanting.”
She added that hybrid seeds saved from one harvest and used for replanting tended to produce very low yields as hybrid seeds come with different characteristics after every generation.
“Hybrid seeds are offspring of distinctly different parental types. In simple terms, it’s a marriage between two different species and the offspring will have the features of both parents.
“But when the child marries, it will have an entirely different structure of its own,’’ she explained.
She added on the other hand, the inbred variety was uniform and had the same fixed characteristics for every generation and planting season.
She said the government must monitor the entry of padi seeds from other countries to avoid the presence of invasive pest species that may be attached to the seeds which can cause an outbreak and adversely affect the rice industry and food security.
“The problem is that there are many entry points and ‘backlanes’ and because of that the entry of the seeds cannot be controlled,” she added.
Noraziyah concurred with Ng that initiatives to produce good quality seeds must be improved but added that it should not just be Mardi’s responsibility.
“Entities such as UKM, Universiti Putra Malaysia and Malaysian Nuclear Agency have proven they have the ability to create new varieties of padi seeds such as the UKMRC2, UKMRC8, Putra 1, Putra 2, and NMR152.
“So, cooperation between domestic and foreign institutions, especially from regional nations, is needed, with more research funding, to support the development of new varieties of padi suitable for local climate and domestic climate change patterns,” she added.
There are many experts in Malaysia, she said, who can study and create new padi varieties but funding and grants were limited even though food security was one of the country’s main focus areas.
