Bangladesh Farmers Turn Back the Clock to Combat Climate Stresses

Indigenous varieties of rice are making a comeback in Bangladesh as farmers abandon high-yielding hybrid rice in favor of more resilient varieties that can cope with more extreme climate conditions, researchers say.

About 20 percent of the rice fields planted in the low-lying South Asian nation now contain indigenous varieties that can stand up to drought, flooding or other stresses, said Jiban Krishna, director general of the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute.

At its peak, high yielding varieties of rice accounted for 90 percent of total rice grown in Bangladesh.

"In places where newly invented varieties fail to cope with stresses, farmers cultivate local varieties," Krishna told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.

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