This is the fifteenth year since the California rice industry adopted the self-help approach to improve productivity and solve the many problems that threaten this important industry. The greatly expanded Rice Research Program was organized in 1968 under the 1937 California Marketing Act. A Rice Research Board of 22 members has volunteered hundreds of hours annually to identifying critical problems and soliciting proposals for their solution. Although many technical problems have been solved, the industry today is faced with serious economic and environmental problems.

Preliminary seed increases of selected lines at the Rice Experiment Static

Since the expanded research program began, average statewide rice yields have risen from 5,250 pounds per acre (average for 1967-69) to 7,030 (average for 1981-83). Many new developments contributed to this 34 percent yield increase, including the breeding of higher yielding varieties; improvements in weed, disease, and insect control; better equipment; and improvements in land leveling, fertilization and water management.

New developments continue to flow from the rice breeding program of the California Cooperative Rice Research Foundation, privately sponsored rice breeders and from other research by the University of California and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Here are some of the highlights from progress reports made to the Rice Research Board for 1983:

• Development and release of a new semi-dwarf long grain rice variety that is early maturing, lodging resistant, and of acceptable quality for domestic and foreign markets.
• Development of tissue- culture techniques for large scale testing of rice for mutants having greater tolerance to herbicides.
• Evidence that the observed differences in head rice yields among maturity classes may be caused by genetic as well as environmental factors.
• Promising results on potential new grass herbicides.
• Additional evidence that resistance to stem rot and sheath blight diseases has been transmitted in crosses between wild species and cultivated rice.
• Promising results with the use of insect growth regulators for the control of the rice water weevil.
• Discovery that rice herbicides can be intentionally degraded with oxidizing agents and thereby provide the possibility of a water treatment to lower residues in fields and drains.
• The .findings that smoke from burning of rice straw is potentially less hazardous as it blows downwind and is exposed to light and that rice smoke has a lower mutagenic potency than other combustion-generated particulate matter. The agricultural burning test program has for the third consecutive year improved air quality compared to years preceding the burning test programs.
• Producer gas can be generated from rice straw, and the gas is of acceptable quality for sustained engine operation.
• Successful operation of a model pilot plant to produce high protein rice flour for baby food and yielding liquid sugars as a byproduct.
• Achievement of a process for producing dissolving-grade pulp from rice straw.

For the past several years, the Rice Research Board has supported a variety of projects aimed at finding new uses for rice straw which, if successful, would obviate the need to burn. Uses, which have been studied have been energy generation, paper making, dissolving-grade pulps for industrial uses, wall board, industrial silicon, and livestock feed. All of these uses have proven to be technically feasible. Unfortunately, none are yet economically competitive with alternative materials presently available. However, improvements have been made in management of straw burning so that the smoke problem is less offensive.

Rice breeders and farm advisors examine new varieties in yield plots.

The herbicide residue problem in rice drainage waters continues to be an unsettling problem both to rice growers and their urban neighbors. Improvements have been made in instrumentation and techniques for detecting residues and their derivatives. Efforts also have been made to manage pesticides to reduce their entry into non-target areas. Continued research is needed to find practical ways to confine drainage waters to ricelands and to detoxify pesticides that might enter drainage systems.

The slump in the rice market has depressed prices below the full cost of production. The worldwide rice crop has increased more rapidly than demand while, at the same time, production costs continue upward. Some growers have been encouraged by their own experimentation with field trials using minimum tillage as a cost cutting method. There still are problems to be solved in making minimum tillage more widely attractive. Increases in U.S. consumption of rice is an encouraging sign, but greater efforts are needed to expand both domestic and foreign markets.

Unit costs of production are reduced by yield increases. Some have questioned whether further yield increases are possible now that California rice yields are the highest in the world. Careful calculations have been' made to estimate the maximum limits of rice yields. These estimates are made on the basis of the amount of photosynthetically active incoming solar radiation, and the efficiency of the rice plant in converting solar to chemical energy. The assumption is made that pests are eliminated and nutritional needs are fully met. On this basis, the maximum limit for rice yield is estimated at approximately 17,000 pounds per acre. Clearly, the potential greatly exceeds current best efforts.

Rice is a crop remarkably suitable to California. Though it is originally a tropical and sub-tropical plant, rice has been adapted to our temperate climate through many years of selection and breeding work. This has left behind most of the serious diseases and pests which affect it in the more tropical regions. California has about a half million acres of excellent rice land characterized by heavy clay soils, usually with an underlaid claypan layer which prevents internal drainage, and an extremely flat surface. These same characteristics make rice soils undesirable for most other crops. Some of these soils are too alkaline for many field crops but are safely used for rice under flooded conditions.

Despite the natural advantages of these soils for rice, the crop could not have survived without the strong research program that has increased yields by a third in just 15 years. The future of rice in this state will continue to depend on research to further increase yields, cut production costs, and protect air and water quality.