Basic and Practical handbook on Variety Trial for Early Maturity Upland Rice Varieties under the Rain-fed Field of West Africa
(Draft Ver.1 - unedited)
Yoshimi SOKEI*1, 2, Kokou AHOUANTON2, Ansumana Gibba3, Demba Jallow3, Yacouba DOUMBIA4, Baba SIDEIBE4, Paulin ASSIGBE5, Cyriaque AKAKPO5, Sékou KEITA6, Aly Condé7, Inoussa AKINTAYO2, Pascal DEGBEY2, and Cisse BOUBAKARY2
(1Japan International Cooperation Agency, 2Africa Rice Center, 3National Agricultural Research Institute of the Gambia, 4Institut D’Economie Rural du Mali, 5Institut National des Recherches Agricoles du Bénin, 6Institut de Recherche Agronomique de Guinée, and 7Ministry of Agriculture of Guinée )
Variety trial is one of the most important experiments for rice cultivation to compare the yield performance between respective varieties under a certain condition. It is also important for us to make a plan of the cultivation strategy such as a cultivation calendar for each variety used by farmers. To meet these objectives we need understand how each variety develops in the field under a certain cultivation condition in your area or country, which means that we need know the type of variety (panicle weight type or panicle number type), the time of critical stage of the varieties (when it is at the panicle differentiation stage, the maximum tiller number stage, heading date, etc) in the growth period of the cultivation season, and so on. This is a basic, practical, and simplified handbook on the variety trial in the rain-fed upland field of West Africa.
Some cultivation techniques like fertilizer application timing for early maturity-panicle weight type varieties such as upland NERICA varieties are still under examination. Therefore such techniques in this handbook will be rewritten in later.