Plant Breeding Division

Rice breeding is a method of altering the genetic pattern of plants to increase rice yield,climetic resistance and pest and disease resistance and other traits. There are several modern breeding technologies are used in breeding program  Hence, this division mainly focuses to develop new high yield rice varieties having resistant to biotic and a-biotic stresses which emerge time to time. Breeding programmes are implemented to developed rice varieties under different age categories (2 1/2, 3, 3 1/2 and 4 months) meet to different requirements. Ultra shortage varieties (2 1/2months) are developed for water shortage areas and 3 month varieties are also introduced to less water available areas. 3 1/2 month varieties are the most popular and cover the large extent of rice cultivation area of the Island. Long age varieties (4 month) are developed and introduced where water is available throughout the season to get higher yield. In addition, breeding division uses biotechnological tool to incorporate the specific genes to overcome the drawback of available varieties.