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Challenges and opportunities in productivity and sustainability of rice cultivation system: a critical review in Indian perspective

• Published: 08 October 2021
• Volume 50 , pages 573–601, ( 2022 )

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• Neeraj Kumar   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7917-2686 1 ,
• R. S. Chhokar 1 ,
• R. P. Meena 1 ,
• A. S. Kharub 1 ,
• S. C. Gill 1 ,
• S. C. Tripathi 1 ,
• O. P. Gupta 1 ,
• S. K. Mangrauthia 2 ,
• R. M. Sundaram 2 ,
• C. P. Sawant 3 ,
• Ajita Gupta 3 ,
• Anandkumar Naorem 4 ,
• Manoj Kumar 5 &
• G. P. Singh 1  

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Rice–wheat cropping system, intensively followed in Indo-Gangetic plains (IGP), played a prominent role in fulfilling the food grains demand of the increasing population of South Asia. In northern Indian plains, some practices such as intensive rice cultivation with traditional method for long-term have been associated with severe deterioration of natural resources, declining factor productivity, multiple nutrients deficiencies, depleting groundwater, labour scarcity and higher cost of cultivation, putting the agricultural sustainability in question. Varietal development, soil and water management, and adoption of resource conservation technologies in rice cultivation are the key interventions areas to address these challenges. The cultivation of lesser water requiring crops, replacing rice in light-textured soil and rainfed condition, should be encouraged through policy interventions. Direct seeding of short duration, high-yielding and stress tolerant rice varieties with water conservation technologies can be a successful approach to improve the input use efficiency in rice cultivation under medium–heavy-textured soils. Moreover, integrated approach of suitable cultivars for conservation agriculture, mechanized transplanting on zero-tilled/unpuddled field and need-based application of water, fertilizer and chemicals might be a successful approach for sustainable rice production system in the current scenario. In this review study, various challenges in productivity and sustainability of rice cultivation system and possible alternatives and solutions to overcome such challenges are discussed in details.

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Introduction

Rice ( Oryza sativa L.)–wheat ( Triticum aestivum L.) is the largest cropping system practised in South Asian countries (Nawaz et al. 2019 ). About 85% of this cropping system falls in Indo-Gangetic plains (IGP), covering nearly 13.5 million hectares (mha) area (Saharawat et al. 2012 ). India alone covers approximately 76% of IGP, spreading in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. Being staple food crops in the country, rice and wheat played a key role in minimizing the gap between food grains demand and production. In recent years, country witnessed surplus food grains production through an integrated approach of high-yielding varieties, disease and pest management, nutrient management, irrigation water management and better mechanization. Rice and wheat production was reported as 34.6 million tonnes (mt) and 11 mt, respectively, during 1960–1961, which is expected to rise to 122.3 and 109.5 mt, respectively, during 2020–2021 (PBAS 2019; PIB 2021). In the last one decade, slow growth in crop productivity has been registered, which may further decline in near future due to some ongoing resource guzzling practices. The trend of rice yield in South Asia is presented in Fig.  1 . From 1998 onwards, Bangladesh witnessed a noble growth in rice yield, surpassing India and Pakistan, and continues to uphold the growing trend. It was due to intensive use of modern technologies such as cultivation of high-yielding varieties, adoption of improved irrigation technologies and balanced fertilizer application (Ahmed 2004 ; Shew et al. 2019 ). In past few years, rice productivity in India looks stagnant, even it may decline in future due to over-exploitation of natural resources (Ladha et al. 2009 ), low seed replacement rate (UPSDR 2019), poor management of irrigation water, fertilizer and crop residue (Ladha et al. 2009 ), same cropping pattern over the years (Nambiar and Abrol 1989 ) and lack of awareness about consequences of faulty cultivation practices among farmers (Dis et al. 2015 ; UPSDR 2019). The problem is not limited to India but also extends to other countries of IGP, where intensive tillage practices and confined agro-biodiversity degraded natural resources to a great extent. Researchers questioned the sustainability of rice–wheat cropping system under present challenges of stagnant yield (Ladha et al. 2003a ), soil degradation (Bhandari et al. 2002 ; Tripathi and Das 2017 ), declining water table (Humphreys et al. 2010 ) and environmental pollution (Bijay-Singh et al. 2008 ). The trend of the area covered under rice cultivation in South Asia is shown in Fig.  2 . In IGP, most of the rice cultivated area falls under Indian Territory, but this area was bounded within 40–45 mha during 1988–2018. The stagnant and limited spatial coverage of rice area is due to unavailability of irrigation facility, high water requirement of the crop, declining water table, labour-intensive cultivation, poor feed quality of by-product (straw), degradation of soil structure and irregular nature of rainfall. In fact, rice cultivation using the conventional method is believed as water-, energy- and capital-exhaustive practice (Bhatt et al. 2016 ).

Source : FAOSTAT )

Trend of rice yield in South Asia (

Trend of rice area in South Asia (

India, a home to 17.7% of the world population, is the prime consumer of water requiring 3000 billion cubic meters annually (Vyas et al. 2019 ). India is the largest consumer of groundwater accounting for about 230 km 3 of groundwater use every year (TWB 2012). India receives nearly 4000 billion cubic meters of precipitation every year. However, only 48% of this water is stored in the surface and groundwater bodies due to losses in various hydrological processes such as runoff, water discharge through rivers to oceans, evaporation and evapotranspiration (Verma and Phansalkar 2007 ; Dhawan 2017 ). A major portion (88–90%) of groundwater extracted is used for irrigation purpose in agricultural fields (Siebert et al. 2010 ; GoI 2014). Rice crop requires huge amount of water than other cereal crops, and it consumes about 3000–5000 L of water to produce 1 kg of rice (Bouman 2009 ; Geethalakshmi et al. 2011 ). Tuong and Bouman ( 2003 ) reported that around 75% of global rice is produced by raising the seedlings in a nursery followed by transplanting operation in puddled field. In addition to excessive water, capital and energy demand, this practice of rice cultivation is associated with soil degradation (Bhatt et al. 2016 ), loss of ecosystem (Nawaz et al. 2019 ) and environmental pollution (Jimmy et al. 2017 ).

In the current scenario, when degradation of soil structure, declining soil health, residue handling issues and harmful emissions from rice cultivated fields are taking place, the sustainability of rice production system is questionable. In India, rice is cultivated on 44 mha area, accounting 20% of total rice production worldwide (Oo et al. 2018 ). It is estimated that India needs to produce 130 mt rice by 2030 to meet the demand of the growing population (Gujja and Thiyagarajan 2009 ). To achieve the projected demand, use of high-yielding varieties, expansion of rice cultivation area and wet tillage would be required, but latter two practices would further increase the irrigation water demand and greenhouse gas emissions (Oo et al. 2018 ). Considering all these aspects, an attempt has been made to critically review the challenges and opportunities in productivity and sustainability of rice cultivation system in Indian perspective. Also, attempts were made to highlight the possible alternatives and solutions to overcome the present challenges in rice cultivation system. The key challenges and intervening areas in rice cultivation system are discussed in details under the following sections:

Underground water table depletion

India is the top user of groundwater around the world (Mukherjee et al. 2015 ), and it has about 25% share in global groundwater consumption. In fact, the groundwater consumption of India is higher than collective groundwater use of China and USA (Margat and van der Gun 2013 ). The unsystematic use of groundwater for irrigation caused widespread over-exploitation of groundwater resources (Rodell et al. 2009 ), which is not sustainable in long-term. In India, out of 160 mha cultivable land, only 68 mha cultivated area is covered with irrigation facilities, while about two-third area is still rain-dependent (Dhawan 2017 ). About 61.6% of irrigation water is extracted from groundwater through wells, dug wells, shallow tube wells and deep tube wells (Suhag 2016 ). The rate of groundwater level fall in India is probably the fastest globally (Aeschbach-Hertig and Gleeson 2012 ). During the last three decades, underground water levels in northern region of India have dropped from 8 to 16 m below ground level, and in rest of India, it has declined from 1 to 8 m below ground level (Sekhri 2013 ). Another estimate reports that north-western India lost 109 giga cubic meter of groundwater between 2002 and 2008 (Rodell et al. 2009 ). The rapid extraction and slow groundwater recharge caused groundwater table to fall at a rate of about 1 m per year (m y −1 ) in Punjab and Haryana, which may fall more rapidly in the coming years (Humphreys et al. 2010 ; Singh et al. 2014 ). In many cities of north-western India, the groundwater table is declining at a rate of 1.6 m y −1 (Singh et al. 2015 ). The huge volumetric loss of groundwater and its faster declining rate might be the cause for India becoming a home for 25% of worldwide population living under water-scarce conditions (Mekonnen and Hoekstra 2016 ; Anonymous 2019a ). The continuous decline of groundwater table has created water-stressed condition, affecting the per-capita water availability. In 1951, per-capita water availability was 5177 cubic meter per year (m 3 y −1 ), which reduced to 1598 m 3 y −1 in 2011 as presented in Table 1 . It has made India a water-stressed country according to international norms (Dhawan 2017 ; GoI 2018). Further, projected per-capita water availability is expected to fall to 1174 m 3 y −1 by 2051 (GoI 2018). Water stress to scarce condition would put enormous pressure on the sustainability of water-guzzling crops like rice. Traditionally grown rice requires around 200–240 cm of the water column from nursery preparation to harvesting stage (Humphreys et al. 2008 ; Chauhan et al. 2012 ). However, the actual amount of water applied by the farmers is much higher especially in light-textured soils (Timsina and Connor 2001 ). Over the years, flood irrigation has become a common practice, even water ponding is considered as necessary part of rice cultivation. Easily accessible and sufficient availability of irrigation water in north-western India turned out rice–wheat cropping system, a classical example of high productive system in non-ideal soils for rice cultivation, which are porous, coarse and highly permeable in nature (Chauhan et al. 2012 ). However, intensive cultivation of rice–wheat cropping system in these regions has forced the farmers to extract the groundwater with submersible pumps, which resulted in over-exploitation of groundwater. Singh and Kasana ( 2017 ) reported that area under the safe limit of groundwater (3.1–10 m) in Haryana state reduced from 44 to 34%, while the area under critical and over-exploited category of groundwater increased from 56 to 64% and 4 to 23%, respectively, during 2004–2012. The decline in groundwater of many districts of Haryana was in the tune of 0.7–1.1 m y −1 . It was concluded that variations in groundwater levels could be due to rice–wheat cropping systems, irregular distribution of rainfall, over urbanization, variation in hydrogeological setup and different aquifer conditions. The irregularity in annual rainfall of India is presented in Fig.  3 . The deviation of annual rainfall from mean value could be very high during the drought years. Moreover, rainfall pattern makes this problem more complicated as during the monsoon season, events of excessive rainfall and the large interval between two consecutive rainfall events take place. In the absence of rainfall events at a certain interval, rice cultivation requires a huge amount of irrigation water, causing rapid extraction of groundwater, which is associated not only with water table depletion but also with carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions, where engines and tractors are used as the prime mover for pumping unit. Undoubtedly, excessive rice cultivation in non-ideal soils, traditional rice cultivation practices and major dependency of irrigation on groundwater would put enormous pressure on natural resources. Furthermore, the excessive use of chemicals and fertilizers in rice cultivation under coarse-textured soils also poses other threats of soil and groundwater contamination with harmful chemicals.

Source: Somasundar ( 2014 ), Jaganmohan ( 2020 )

Annual rainfall and deviation from mean rainfall of India during 1988–2018

Groundwater pollution

Groundwater pollution is a serious concern, which affects grain quality and health of human and animals. The excess and untimely use of N-fertilizer is associated with nitrate leaching, which pollutes the groundwater (Bhatt et al. 2016 ). In a study, researchers found higher nitrate content in groundwater of the regions where intensive rice–wheat cropping system was practised (Bajwa 1993 ). The problem of groundwater pollution is more serious in rice cultivating regions with coarse-textured soils, where frequent and heavy irrigation is applied. Bouman et al. ( 2002 ) found higher N leaching losses under wet season rainfed rice than irrigated rice. Pathak et al. ( 2009 ) observed higher cumulative leaching losses of nitrogen (46–69 kg N ha −1 ) in rice field than the wheat field (16–22 kg N ha −1 ). Rainfall plays an important role in N losses, which can be as high as 18% of applied nitrogen in high rainfall years (Pathak et al. 2009 ). Wang et al. ( 2015a ) reported that intensive rice cultivation practice in subtropical China led to moderate ammonium-N (NH 4 -N) pollution of shallow groundwater. It was concluded that flooded land and excessive N-fertilizer rate could lead to worse NH 4 –N and nitrate–N (NO 3 –N) pollution, respectively. Coarse-textured soils leach N more rapidly than heavy-textured soils, and N leaching under such soils is highly dependent on N-fertilizer application (Benbi 1990 ). Though it is very difficult to stop the nitrogen leaching completely, better management practices by adopting the proper irrigation and fertilizer scheduling can minimize the leaching losses and improve N-use efficiency (Singh et al. 1995 ). The cultivation of high water requiring crop like rice in arsenic-contaminated soils like in middle IGP of northern India carries the threat of groundwater contamination with arsenic (Srivastava et al. 2015 ). In many locations, arsenic content of groundwater under rice cultivation exceeded the acceptable limit (10 µg L −1 ), raising the contamination level up to 312 µg L −1 (Srivastava et al. 2015 ). The application of such polluted groundwater for irrigation purpose can lead to other problems of soil and grain toxicity.

Soil and grain toxicity

It is extremely important to relook the practice of intensive rice cultivation under toxic soils and toxic irrigation water as it could lead to grain toxicity, affecting the human health. The practice of growing rice in arsenic-contaminated soils like in middle IGP escalates the possibility of soil and grains contamination with arsenic beyond the safe limit (Srivastava et al. 2015 ). It was reported that arsenic content in soil under rice cultivation exceeded the allowable limits of 20 mg kg −1 , raising the contamination level up to 35 mg kg −1 . Moreover, arsenic toxicity in the grains was found in the range of 0.179–0.932 mg kg −1 , leaving 8 of 17 varieties unsafe for human consumption. Dhillon and Dhillon ( 1991 ) found selenium toxicity in the soil and plants when selenium contaminated irrigation water was used for irrigation in rice–wheat cropping system under silty loam soils for a longer period. The intensive cultivation of frequent irrigation requiring crops like low land rice turned out one of the major factors responsible for the deposition of seleniferous material in the soil, leaving more than 100 ha area under selenium toxicity (Dhillon and Dhillon 1991 ). Sara et al. ( 2017 ) observed that arsenic and selenium content of soil increased with duration of rice monoculture system. The increase in arsenic and selenium concentration in soil caused toxicity in rice grain. The anaerobic condition in rice cultivation affects nutrient uptake by the plants and production of toxic substances (De Datta 1981 ). Tran ( 1998 ) also reported that long-term soil puddling and rice monoculture system increases the risk of soil toxicities. Shah et al. ( 2021 ) highlighted the toxic residues of pesticides and metalloids in rice grain under flooded rice cultivation system. Needless to say that intensive rice cultivation with puddling and flooding method projects the health risk associated with soil and grain toxicity in long-term. Sara et al. ( 2017 ) recommended to control these elements with prior importance by employing the different actions including crop rotations, soil amendments, etc.

Degradation of soil structure

Rice cultivation using conventional method requires intensive wet tillage primarily to reduce the percolation losses and to suppress the weed growth. The repeated puddling operation creates an impervious layer at 15–20 cm depth, which restricts water infiltration and root growth (Aggarwal et al. 1995 ; Kukal and Aggarwal 2003 ). The negative effects of subsurface compaction on the establishment, seed emergence, root growth and yield of succeeding crop are of major concern (Kukal and Aggarwal 2003 ). The puddling operation deteriorates the soil structure by damaging the soil aggregates, breaking the capillary pores and dispersing the fine clay particles (Aggarwal et al. 1995 ). Bakti et al. ( 2010 ) recommended that in fine-textured soil like clay having low percolation rate, puddling, which is capital intensive and detrimental to soil structure, should be minimized. It would be beneficial for soil health and its functionality to replace the puddled transplanted rice (PTR) with lesser intensive cultivation practices such as zero-till-based mechanized transplanting, direct-seeded rice (DSR) and strip tillage-based transplanting. The adoption of such rice cultivation practices under conservation agriculture (CA) either on a flat or permanent bed and diversified cropping systems with wetting and drying irrigation method could be effective to improve the soil structure (Singh et al. 2005a ; Bakti et al. 2010 ; Chauhan et al. 2012 ).

Soil health deterioration

The intensive tillage, puddling operation and excessively cultivation of rice–wheat cropping system deteriorated health, structure and nutrient balance of the soils in north-western India. Killebrew and Wolff ( 2010 ) reported that long-term intensive rice cultivation system led to soil salinization, nutrient deficiencies, soil toxicities and reduced capacity of the soil to supply the nitrogen to the plant roots. Such changes can lead to reduced yield and abandonment of paddy fields in long-term. In other studies, Boparai et al. (1992) and Mohanty and Painuli ( 2004 ) observed that long-term water submergence and mineral fertilization practices in conventional rice cultivation resulted in degraded soil quality in terms of disintegration of stable aggregates and reduced soil organic matter. The concerns have been expressed on the sustainability of high yield of crops due to intensive rice cultivation system and multiple harvests of crops in a year (Livsey et al. 2019 ). The sustainability of rice production under rice–wheat cropping system in Punjab has been reported at risk due to soil degradation and declining water table (Dhaliwal et al. 2020 ) along with inadequate crop residue recycling and lack of organic fertilization. These changes in soil–water environment led to micro-nutrients deficiencies and yield stagnation (Dobermann and Fairhurst 2002 ; Yadvinder-Singh and Bijay-Singh 2003). However, such negative impacts can be lowered by adopting rice in combination with leguminous crops and rice–oilseed crop rotation (Chen et al. 2012 ; Meetei et al. 2020 ). Moreover, shifting the rice monoculture to rice–fish farming showed positive effects on soil health in terms of labile pool of C fractions, microbial populations, nutrients and soil fertility in addition to environmental sustainability (Bihari et al. 2015 ). The problem of declining soil health becomes worse with the burning of rice residue, which results in 20–100% loss of precious nutrients retained in the residue (Singh et al. 2008 ). In response to nutrient losses with residue burning, farmers have to apply more fertilizers to obtain a similar crop yield, which raises the cost of cultivation. It needs urgent attention to improve the soil health in which residue retention on the soil surface and seeding with zero-till practice can play significant roles (Malik and Yadav 2008 ; Sidhu et al. 2008 ). Extending the resource conservation technologies (RCTs) for rice cultivation under conventional and CA along with soil water potential-based irrigation scheduling could be effective to improve the soil health and environmental quality (Dwivedi et al. 2003 ; Gupta and Sayre 2007 ; Jat et al. 2010 ).

Declining crop response

The decline in crop response to applied fertilizers is a serious concern, causing the farmers to apply fertilizers above the recommended dose in an injudicious way. Although crop response to P and K fertilizers can be realized only after 5–10 years, it is necessary to apply these fertilizers along with N as the application of N-fertilizer alone in long-term can cause yield decline in rice–wheat cropping system (Bhatt et al. 2016 ). The low fertilizer use efficiency due to fertilizer losses as surface runoff, leaching, volatilization and unfavourable soil moisture is one of the major reasons for declining crop response to applied fertilizers. Moreover, long-term practice of same cropping sequence like rice–wheat in IGP over the years, injudicious and unbalanced application of fertilizers, inappropriate timing of fertilizer application and low soil organic matter are other factors responsible for declining crop response to applied fertilizers (Chauhan et al. 2012 ; Bhatt et al. 2016 ). In rice–wheat cropping system, the net negative balance of NPK is 2.22 mt per annum for IGP (Tandon 2007 ). The current trend of decline in crop response to applied fertilizers would create more difficulties for any further improvement in crop productivity. Therefore, soil and water management, integration of green or brown manuring, growing of dual-purpose pulses and addition of organic manure along with inorganic fertilizers are required to reverse the trend and improve the crop response in long run.

Decreasing water productivity

In the scenario of depleting groundwater table, decreased water productivity is of major concern, which has been reported from different agro-climatic zones of the country (Humphreys et al. 2010 ; Bhatt 2015 ). Decreased water productivity along with deteriorating water table can hamper the objective of sufficient grains production in future. It requires urgent attention to increase the water productivity of crops especially C3 crops like rice, which are less water efficient. This can be achieved by grabbing the opportunities at biological, environment and management levels (Sharma et al. 2015 ). Rice (lowland) is a less water productive crop (0.2–1.2 kg m −3 ) as compared to wheat (0.8–1.6 kg m −3 ) and maize (1.6–3.9 kg m −3 ) (Sharma et al. 2015 ). While the Punjab and Haryana states of India report the highest land productivity (4 tonnes per hectare) for rice, the water productivity is relatively low at 0.22–0.60 kg m −3 , even though these states have almost 100% irrigation coverage. It signifies the inappropriate use of irrigation water. Puddling and flooding operations in lowland rice production system consume a major portion of irrigation amount, causing lesser water productivity. The PTR requires 15–25 cm water column for saturation and flooding of soil (Tuong 1999 ). However, puddling method also reduces deep drainage losses by lowering the infiltration rate, which is generally high in the absence of puddling in coarse-textured soils (Sharma et al. 2004 ). The reduction in infiltration rate depends on soil texture, tillage intensity and puddling operations, water table and depth of floodwater (Gajri et al. 1999 ; Kukal and Aggarwal 2002 ). Bouman and Tuong ( 2001 ) reported that rice performs well in terms of yield when continuous flooding or saturated soil condition is maintained. Rice yield reduces when soil moisture drops below to saturation level. Technologies such as alternate wetting and drying (AWD), a system of rice intensification (SRI), bed planting, DSR and soil mulching have been adopted to reduce the water inputs and improving the water productivity (Tuong et al. 2005 ). Tabbal et al. ( 2002 ) reported that rice cultivation in saturated soil culture required 30–60% lesser water, which increased the water productivity by 30–115% over conventional practice. However, a yield penalty of 4–9% was levied on rice cultivation in saturated soil culture as compared to conventional practice. Water-saving in AWD method is attributed to a reduction in seepage and drainage losses (Tuong et al. 1994 ). This practice of irrigation is usually applied to DSR in which water required for raising the nursery and transplanting the rice is eliminated. However, the duration of DSR is longer than PTR, which would require higher water for evapotranspiration process than conventionally cultivated rice (Cabangon et al. 2002 ; Humphreys et al. 2010 ). Researchers asserted that net water savings depends on water saved from longer irrigation interval and additional water required in pursuance to deep drainage losses in DSR as compared to PTR. A few researchers reported that lesser irrigation amount was required in DSR than PTR with or without yield penalty (Jat et al. 2009 ; Yadav et al. 2010 ). The yield of DSR reduced rapidly when the soil was permitted to dry beyond soil moisture tension of 20 kPa (Yadav et al. 2010 ). These findings suggest that it is essential to reduce the unproductive water outflows to improve the water productivity of rice, which may be accomplished by soil water potential-based frequently irrigated DSR. Water-saving techniques such as micro-irrigation systems (sprinkler and drip irrigation) proved as cutting edge technology for improving the water use efficiency and conserving the water due to elimination of conveyance losses, evaporation from the water surface, runoff losses, etc. (Meena et al. 2015 ). Technologies such as CA should be promoted and practised on a large scale to improve the water productivity of crops. Agronomical practices such as rice cultivation on a raised bed with furrow irrigation, DSR with cultivars of high stress tolerance index, unpuddled transplanted rice and DSR with straw mulching would be effective approaches to increase the water productivity without much effect on the rice yield (Mahajan et al. 2011 ; Kar et al. 2018 ). Needless to say that India also need to review the present scenario of producing the higher water requiring crops such as rice and sugarcane in water-stressed areas (Dhawan 2017 ).

Declining factor productivity

The declining trend of total factor productivity in agriculture is a severe threat to sustainable farming and food security. In recent years, a significant portion of the cultivable land faced stagnation or negative growth in total factor productivity (Kumar and Mittal 2006 ). In low land of Asia, excessive tillage led to degradation of land resource base, which reduced the productivity growth of primary cereals like rice and wheat (Pingali and Heisey 2001 ). In north-western India, the rice–wheat cropping system has been associated with environmental degradation along with stagnant or declining crop productivity, thereby posing a threat to sufficient grain production (Aggarwal et al. 2000 ). A few researchers stated that declining factor productivity and degrading soil and water resources have threatened the sustainability of rice–wheat cropping system (Hobbs and Morris 1996 ; Ladha et al. 2003a ). A more yield decline has been witnessed in rice as compared to wheat under rice–wheat cropping system (Ladha et al. 2003b ). However, generally, it is argued that wheat yield suffers more after PTR due to soil structure degradation (Humphreys et al. 1994 ; Bhushan and Sharma 1999 ). Ladha et al. ( 2003b ) suggested to adopt the suitable agronomic and soil management practices for sustaining and improving the crop productivity.

Diverse weed flora

Weeds are the major problem in rice cultivation. Effective weed management plays an important role in the overall profitability of any cropping system. The destruction of weeds with puddling is the main reason for ongoing traditional practice in rice cultivation. However, intensive rice cultivation over the years confined the eco-biodiversity and weed spectrum, and therefore, specific weeds develop more resistance against herbicides and compete with crop plants for water, nutrient and energy. Crop diversification can effectively change the weed spectrum and reduce weed infestation and resistance (Chhokar and Malik 2002 ). Unlike in traditional practice, DSR restricts the weed seed distribution and weed killing and leaves 60–90% weed seeds in the top layer of the soil (Swanton et al. 2000 ; Chauhan et al. 2006 ). The diverse weed flora consisting of grasses, broadleaved and sedges infest rice crop depending on the rice culture and management practices adopted as well as soil and climate conditions. The major weeds found in the rice fields in South Asia are mentioned in Table 2 . Echinochloa crus-galli and Echinochloa colona are the major weeds found in different rice ecologies (aerobic as well as anaerobic rice) in Asian countries. There are many weeds such as Dactyloctenium aegyptium, Digitaria sanguinalis, Digera arvensis , Trianthema portulacastrum and Cyperus rotundus, which do not infest puddle transplanted rice but found in abundance in DSR and cause huge yield reductions (Chhokar et al. 2014 ) . Overall, DSR has diverse weed flora due to alternate wetting and dry conditions. Further, the losses caused by weeds in rice depend upon weed densities, nature of weed flora, duration of weed competition as well as crop establishment methods (Diarra et al. 1985 ; Fischer and Ramirej 1993 ; Eleftherohorinos et al. 2002 ; Chhokar et al. 2014 ). Crop establishment methods such as direct seeding (under dry or wet conditions) or transplanting (under puddled or unpuddled conditions) have strong influence on weed diversity and intensity. Numerous studies have reported higher yield losses in direct seeding compared to transplanting in rice cultivation. (Walia et al. 2008 ; Chauhan 2012 ; Chhokar et al. 2014 ). Based on the large number of farm trials (Gharade et al. 2018), weeds in India caused a loss of about 15–66% in DSR and 6–30% in PTR. Similarly, other workers also reported that weeds cause worldwide, 30–100 per cent rice grain yield reductions in DSR (Oerke and Dehne 2004 ; Rao et al. 2007 ; Kumar and Ladha 2011 ; Chhokar et al. 2014 ). The higher yield reductions in DSR compared to PTR are due to infestation of diverse weed flora in abundance and their emergence before or along with the crop as well as in several flushes, whereas in PTR crop has an advantage of about one-month-old seedlings over weeds (Chhokar et al. 2014 ; Rao et al. 2007 ). Moreover, standing water during the initial stages reduces weeds germination and also improves the herbicides effects. Hill and Hawkins ( 1996 ) reported that same relative E. crus-galli density caused a 20% yield reduction in PTR compared to 70% in DSR. Besides yield losses, weed infestation also reduces rice quality (Menzes et al. 1997 ). Worldwide, rice is grown under different ecologies ranging from an upland to lowland situations, but maximum area is occupied with PTR, where fields are flooded during the most of the crop duration. The depth of the water influences the type and density of the weed flora (Kent and Johnson 2001 ; Kumar and Ladha 2011 ). However, the scarce and costly labour for transplanting is forcing to shift towards the DSR. The labour problem has been aggravated recently due to Covid-19 pandemic in northern India (Haryana and Punjab) and as a result, many farmers shifted from PTR to DSR. However, for long-term success of DSR, two pre-requisites are selection of suitable varieties and efficient weed management (Chhokar et al. 2014 ).

In DSR, single pre- or post-application of herbicide fails to control the diverse weed flora and combination of herbicides either in tank mixture or in sequence is required to have effective control of broad-spectrum weeds. The application of pre-emergence pendimethalin or oxadiargyl followed by either bispyribac or penoxsulam in combination with ethoxysulfuron or pyrazosulfuron controls the diverse weed flora in DSR. Fenoxaprop + safener (Rice Star) effectively controls the problematic weeds, Dactyloctenium aegyptium and Digitaria sanguinalis. Also, the ready mixture of triafamone + ethoxysulfuron as well as penoxsulam + cyhalofop can be utilized for diverse weed flora control. The sole dependency on herbicide is not desirable due to the risk of evolution and spread of herbicide resistant weeds. Weedy rice or red rice ( O. sativa f. spontanea ) has turned out as a major challenge in rice cultivation where PTR has been replaced with DSR (Kumar and Ladha 2011 ). In fact, weedy rice problem in Malaysia has left some farmers to switch back to transplanting method of rice cultivation to control it. Therefore, for effective weed management in long-term, herbicides in mixtures and rotations should be supported with multiple non-chemical weed control strategies such as stale seed bed, competitive cultivars, crop rotation, use of weed free seed and mechanical weeding to remove the weeds before seed setting. In addition, the development and large-scale adoption of herbicide-tolerant rice in future will simplify and provide cost-effective diverse weed flora control in DSR.

Labour scarcity

The labour scarcity and higher labour cost are the emerging challenges in rice production system (Lauren et al. 2008 ). The labour shortage causes the delay in rice transplantation, which may reduce the yield by 30–70% upon delay of 1–2 months (Rao and Pradhan 1973 ). The problem of a labour shortage during the rice transplantation and wheat-sowing season arises due to engagement of labour in assured working scheme like MGNREGA by Government of India. Rice transplantation is very laborious, tedious and time-consuming operation, which requires 300–350 man-h ha −1 (Bhatt et al. 2016 ). It has also been observed that manual random transplanting of rice results in lesser seedlings per unit area compared to the recommended level of 30–40 plants per square meter. Mechanical transplanting of rice is being adopted, which requires only 40 man-h ha −1 to tackle the issues of labour scarcity, higher labour cost and delay in rice transplantation (Mohanty et al. 2010 ). After harvesting the rice with combine harvesters, the problems of critical window period between rice harvest and wheat sowing, labour scarcity and higher labour cost involved in manual residue handling encourage the farmers to adopt the practice of residue burning to avoid any delay in wheat sowing. The farmers of Punjab and Haryana regions are more concerned about timely seeding of wheat as its yield is reduced by 26.8 kg day −1  ha −1 , when sowing is done after 30th November (Tripathi et al. 2005 ). The research focus on machinery development, subsidiary on residue handling machines and ban on crop residue burning by Government of India have prompted the farmers to adopt alternate practices for residue management. However, it would require more research focus on machinery development for multi-cropping systems, awareness of farmers about consequences of residue burning, set-up of industries engaged in manufacturing of residue-based products at block level and schemes like incentives for supplying the raw materials, i.e. crop residues to such industries.

Residue management challenges

In India, more than 686 mt of crop residue is generated every year, of which 234 mt is surplus (Hiloidhari et al. 2014 ). Around 368 mt crop residue is generated from cereal crops in which rice and wheat contribute approximately 154 and 131 mt, respectively (Hiloidhari et al. 2014 ). Along with the crop production, residue generated from the agriculture sector is increasing every year as given in Table 3 . Among the various crop residues, management of rice residue and sugarcane trash has been very challenging due to its poor feed quality owing to higher silica content, narrow window period between rice harvest and wheat sowing, higher cost of residue handling machines, labour-intensive operation of residue removal and lack of storage and energy generation systems. These challenges force the farmers of north-western India to adopt the injudicious practice of residue burning as an economical option for timely sowing of wheat into combine harvested rice fields. Such unfair practices degrade the environment by contaminating the air with carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH 4 ) and particulate matter. In fact, air quality index of National Capital Region of India falls sever to emergency level during the rice-harvest and wheat-sowing season (APRC 2018). Crop residue burning is also associated with other problems such as loss of nutrients retained in the residue, global warming and soil health deterioration. Hence, the farmers have been suggested to use the rice residue for manure, energy production, biogas production, ethanol generation, gasification, biochar and mushroom cultivation according to easily accessible option to them (Fig.  4 ). A few researchers reported that incorporation of residue in the soil is an effective in-situ residue management option, which improves the soil health in long-term (Kumar and Goh 2000 ; Sidhu and Beri 2005 ; Bijay-Singh et al. 2008 ). However, higher energy requirement and temporary immobilization of nitrogen are the key challenges in this method, which increases the cost of cultivation (Singh et al. 2005b , 2020 ). The surface retention of rice residue by direct seeding the wheat or other crops with resource conserving machines such as zero-till drill, strip-till drill, mulcher, punch planter, Happy Seeder and Rotary Disc Drill emerged as more promising option for residue management (Sidhu et al. 2007 , 2015 ; Sharma et al. 2008 ). Researchers reported multiple benefits of reduced soil erosion, improved soil organic carbon, reduced water losses through evaporation and less emergence of weeds in direct seeding of wheat under residue covered field (Ding et al. 2002 ; Humphreys et al. 2010 ; Sidhu et al. 2015 ). Busari et al. ( 2015 ) concluded that conservation tillage either zero tillage or reduced tillage along with anchored crop residue can build up a better soil environment along with lessened impact on the environment, leading to climate resilience crop production system. The non-conventional seeding practice, i.e. direct drilling, allows in-situ management of crop residue and timely seeding of crops. It also provides the yield advantage to crops, while saving the time, water (10–15%) and diesel (70–80%) along with reduced impact on the environment (Erenstein and Laxmi 2008 ; Erenstein 2009 ; Mishra and Singh 2012 ). Despite multiple benefits, the adoption of these technologies is not very impressive at farmers’ field. Therefore, more efforts on the development of suitable seeding machines for multi-cropping systems under conventional and CA and their popularization are required for effective in-situ residue management on large scale at farmers’ field. Custom hiring service needs to be promoted at block and village level to overcome the issue of costly residue handling and seedling machines for farmers belonging to small- and medium-land holdings. Moreover, utilization of crop residue for industrial and energy applications requires infrastructure development, establishment of residue collection centres at block level, build-up of strong supply chains, policy interventions, large-scale trainings and incentives to farmers to drive the sustainable residue management mission.

Different in-field and off-field options for residue management

Environmental pollution

The agriculture sector has been a major source of methane (CH 4 ) and nitrous oxide (N 2 O) emissions, primarily driven from flood-based rice cultivation (Kritee et al. 2018 ), use of synthetic fertilizers (Zschornack et al. 2018 ) and residue burning practices (Jain et al. 2014 ). Such emissions can raise the global warming potential to 10 times in rice season than winter (Zschornack et al. 2018 ). It is estimated that agriculture is the largest sector, contributing about 44% of anthropogenic methane emissions (Janssens-Maenhout et al. 2019 ). The graph plotted using the data taken from FAO shows a consistent decrease in the contribution of the agriculture sector to CH 4 emission during 1990–2017 (Fig.  5 a). However, interestingly amount of CH 4 emission emitted from agriculture sector consistently increased for the same period (Fig.  5 b). Needless to say that other sectors emitted CH 4 emissions in a faster way than agriculture. But changes in agricultural practices such as increased cultivable area especially under rice cultivation, an overdose application of fertilizers and residue burning have elevated CH 4 emissions significantly. Similarly, the amount of N 2 O emission emitted from agriculture sector consistently increased during 1990–2017 (Fig.  5 c and 5d). Apart from CH 4 and N 2 O emissions, the traditional practice of rice cultivation significantly contributes to other greenhouse gas emissions, too. Puddling operation in mechanized rice cultivation consumes much amount of fuel and thereby raises CO 2 level in the environment. Also, more water requiring crops are responsible for higher CO 2 emission as compared to other crops in the areas where stationary diesel engines or tractors are used for pumping out the water. The burning of 1 L of diesel supplies 2.67 kg of CO 2 to the environment. The problems of environmental pollution from rice cultivation are not limited to its growth period but also after harvesting of rice. Economic constraints, unavailability of suitable residue handling machines and poor feed quality of rice residue encourage the farmers to adopt the unfair practice of residue burning for quick in-situ management of residue and timely seeding of wheat. It creates a huge burden on the environment during the rice-harvesting and wheat-sowing season. Kumar et al. ( 2019 ) estimated the loss due to residue burning by taking nutrient losses, yield loss, soil biodiversity, irrigation, health and other factors into consideration. It was observed that residue burning in north-western India caused losses to the tune of Rs. 8953 per hectare. As far as CH 4 and N 2 O emissions are concerned, better water management practices can lower these emissions from the rice fields. CH 4 emission reduces significantly with intermittent irrigation approach, while N 2 O emission rises under such conditions, thereby creating a trade-off between CH 4 and N 2 O emissions (Yue et al. 2005 ). However, CH 4 emission plays a dominant role in greenhouse gas emissions. The excessive use of fertilizer, chemicals and non-renewable energy in PTR raises other emissions of CO 2 , oxides of nitrogen (NO x ), oxides of sulphur (SO x ) and heavy metal (Jimmy et al. 2017 ). It is important to optimize N-fertilizer doses to improve its uptake efficiency and to reduce the losses and emission load on the environment (Ju et al. 2009 ; Qiao et al. 2012 ). A shift in cultivation method from PTR + residue retention to non-puddled transplanting using strip tillage + residue retention can mitigate 15–30% greenhouse gas emissions (CO 2 equivalent emission) along with the benefit of carbon storage in the soil (Alam et al. 2016 , 2019 ). The adoption of cultivation practices such as DSR on flat or permanent beds, zero-till mechanized transplanting and strip tillage + transplanting can alleviate harmful impacts of puddling method on the environment. However, it requires more research efforts to address weed control, soil-borne pathogens and grain quality challenges of rice cultivated under non-puddled practices (Kumar et al. 2011). A shift from intensive cereal–cereal production system to leguminous-cereal cultivation or replacing rice–wheat with maize–wheat cropping system periodically under zero-till or CA practice could be beneficial for sustainable food grain production. The integrated approach of adopting low duration and lesser water requiring varieties, water management, residue management and RCTs in rice cultivation can mitigate the environmental pollution.

Figure depicting ( a ) share of agriculture sector in CH 4 emission, ( b ) amount of CH 4 emission from agriculture sector, ( c ) share of agriculture sector in N 2 O emission, ( d ) amount of N 2 O emission from agriculture sector (

• Global warming

Global warming is an emerging serious threat to agriculture sector. Greenhouse gases like CH 4 , CO 2 and N 2 O trap the short wave radiation, causing a net increase in the global temperature. The comparative assessment of different crops should be made not only based on yield potential but also their emission intensity, i.e. net return to the environment. For instance, the production of 1 kg rice returns 0.71 kg CO 2 equivalent (CO 2 -eq) emissions to the environment as compared to 0.27 kg CO 2 -eq emissions per kg production of other cereals ( Source: FAOSTAT ). In addition to this, huge amount of residue generated from rice and sugarcane crops creates management challenges and farmers burn the residue for timely sowing of wheat especially in IGP. The total carbon present in rice residue converts to CO 2 (70%), CO (7%), CH 4 (0.66%) and particulate matter, while 2.09% nitrogen to N 2 O gas upon burning (NPMCR 2014 ). The burning of crop residue is not only associated with air pollution but also with loss of precious nutrients retained in the crop residue. During the crop residue burning, almost 100% carbon, more than 90% nitrogen, 20–25% phosphorus and potassium and about 60% sulphur are lost in the form of various gases and particulate matter (Singh et al. 2008 ). The gases emitted from crop residue burning can cause radiation imbalance, leading to harmful effects such as more aerosols in the region, acid rain and ozone layer depletion. Hence, like in other crops, farmers should adopt residue management and RCTs in rice cultivation as well for a sustainable farming. Ma et al. ( 2019 ) found that global warming potential (GWP) and greenhouse gas intensity (GHGI) reduced by 12.6–59.9% and 10.5–65.8%, respectively, by returning the wheat crop waste to the soil in the form of straw, straw-derived biochar and straw with straw-decomposing microbial inoculants over no straw return practice. Sapkota et al. ( 2017 ) and Chen et al. ( 2021 ) highlighted the use of no-tillage with residue retention practice to combat the global warming potential in rice–wheat and rice–rice cropping systems. The return of crop residue to the soil should be in the form of mulching as residue incorporation into soil can raise CH 4 emissions by 3.2–3.9 times of straw-induced SOC sequestration rate, thereby worsening the GWP rather than mitigating climate change (Xia et al. 2014 ). In a different study, Pittelkow et al. ( 2014 ) found that potential yield of rice along with minimal yield-scaled GWP is achievable by using the optimal doses of N-fertilizer. Nemecek et al. ( 2012 ) highlighted the lowest GWP for sugar crops (< 0.05 kg CO 2 -eq kg −1 ) followed by root crops (< 0.15 kg CO 2 -eq kg −1 ) and vegetable and fruits (< 0.35 kg CO 2 -eq kg −1 ). Cereals (except rice) and pulses were found to have medium GWP (< 0.6 kg CO 2 -eq kg −1 ), while oil crops (cotton, peanuts) and rice exhibited the highest GWP (1.2–2.4 kg CO 2 -eq kg −1 ). Needless to say that it would be beneficial to the environment and agro-ecosystem to replace the higher GWP posing cereal crop with vegetable, sugar or root crops in cereal–cereal cropping system. The better water management techniques replacing the continuous flooding in rice cultivation might be effective to reduce the GWP further from rice-based cropping systems (Jiang et al. 2019a ).

Abiotic stress challenges in rice

Rice can be grown in most diverse ecologies; however, its growth and productivity are severely affected by abiotic factors such as heat stress, cold stress, salinity, flood and drought (Biswal et al. 2019 ). The severity and intensity of these abiotic stresses are increasing due to climate change (Pereira 2016 ). With the continuous increase in greenhouse gases and extensive human interference in the environment, adverse effects of climate change are likely to increase. The prediction models have shown severe rice yield losses under intensive climate warming scenarios (Zhao et al. 2016 ). Increased concentration of CO 2 and fluctuations in temperature and precipitation would impact the rice growth and productivity severely due to significant effects of these factors in photosynthesis and other important metabolic processes (Liu et al. 2017 ; Wang et al. 2020 ). A recent study suggested that elevated levels of CO 2 also affected protein, iron, zinc and vitamins content of rice cultivars grown in Asia, thereby posing a serious challenge to human health (Zhu et al. 2018 ). Temperature is one of the most critical abiotic factors which influences the rice production, productivity and grain quality directly. Heat stress affects rice growth and metabolism and has severe impact on all the growth phases, especially seedling and reproductive stage (Sailaja et al. 2015 ; Bhogireddy et al. 2021 ). In a recent study, Zhao et al. ( 2017a ) estimated the global yield loss of rice by 3.2% for every 1 °C increase in global mean temperature by compiling the extensive published results from different analytical methods. On the contrary, positive effects of temperature and increased CO 2 on rice growth were predicted in Madagascar (Gerardeaux et al. 2012 ) suggesting that climate change may bring better scenario for rice cultivation in this region.

Little efforts have been made towards mapping the quantitative trait locus (QTL) for heat stress tolerance (Shanmugavadivel et al. 2017 ; Kilasi et al. 2018 ). Moreover, further characterization of these QTLs to understand the mechanisms and causal genes has not been very impressive. Few genes like ERECTA (ER), a homolog of Arabidopsis receptor like kinase and α2 subunit of the 26S proteasome have been identified as potential regulators imparting heat stress tolerance in rice (Li et al. 2015 ; Shen et al. 2015 ). The O . glaberrima allele of TT1 was shown to be more efficient in degradation of cytotoxic denatured proteins during the heat stress. Another gene OsDPB3-2 ( LOC_Os03g63530 ) imparts heat stress tolerance in rice through positive regulation of dehydration-responsive element binding protein 2A (DREB2A). Notably, the overexpression of DPB did not show any phenotypic aberrations suggesting that it can be used as candidate gene for improving thermotolerance in rice (Sato et al. 2016 ).

Similarly, stress due to cold temperature at seedling and booting stages can cause severe loss to rice grain production (Xiao et al. 2018 ). In rice, a pathway mediated by CBF/DREB1 play a crucial role in cold tolerance (Chinnusamy et al. 2007 ; Ritonga and Chen 2020 ). Other transcription factors such as OsMYB4 , MYBS3 , OsbHLH002 and OsMAPK3 positively regulate the cold stress tolerance response in rice (Su et al. 2010 ). Fujino et al. ( 2008 ) identified that qLTG3–1 (Os03g0103300) encoding protein of unknown function is important for germination at low temperature. Cultivars harbouring tolerant allele of qLTG3–1 or overexpressing rice lines showed low-temperature germinability phenotype, suggesting variations in promoter region of tolerant and susceptible alleles. In a crucial study, a gene responsible for cold tolerance of japonica rice was cloned and characterized through QTL analysis. COLD1 (Chilling Tolerance; LOC_Os04 g51180) was found to be a key player associated with chilling tolerance, which acts through activation of Ca ++ channel by interacting with G protein and regulating G protein signalling at plasma membrane (Ma et al. 2015 ). Interestingly, a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) at the 15th nucleotide of the 4th exon of COLD1A was attributed to difference in low-temperature-tolerant japonica and susceptible indica cultivars. The susceptible genotypes had T/C instead of A present in tolerant genotypes, which resulted in Met187/Thr187 (susceptible) to Lys187 (tolerant) substitution. The tolerant allele was suggested to be derived from O. rufipogan wild rice (Ma et al. 2015 ). An SNP in coding sequence of LOC_Os10g34840 was identified through genome-wide association study of 1033 rice accessions, which contribute low-temperature tolerance at seedling stage. This SNP at 18,598,921 (G in tolerant while A in susceptible) caused Gly (tolerant) to Ser (susceptible) substitution (Xiao et al. 2018 ). Another such gene Os09g0410300 was shown to contribute cold tolerance at seedling stage, and the phenotype was attributed to nucleotide variations present in its promoter resulting in tolerant and susceptible alleles of a gene (Zhao et al. 2017b ). In addition to genes for cold tolerant at seedling stage, few genes imparting tolerance at vegetative and booting/reproductive stages have also been characterized. Ctb1 (cold tolerance at booting stage) encoding a F box protein and CTB4a encoding a conserved leucine rich repeat receptor like kinase have been cloned and demonstrated their role in conferring cold tolerance at booting stage (Zhang et al. 2017 ). The tolerant allele of CTB4a contained 5 SNPs (at positions 2536, 2511, 1930, 780 and 2063) in its promoter, which helps in better expression of gene in tolerant genotypes (Zhang et al. 2017 ). In another study, a gene contributing cold tolerance at vegetative growth stage was mapped and characterized (Lu et al. 2014 ). The Low-Temperature Growth 1 ( LTG1 ) encoding a casein kinase I regulates cold tolerance through auxin dependent pathway. The tolerant allele of LTG1 has a SNP, i.e. T at 1070 in place of A in susceptible allele, causing amino acid substitution Iso357 (in tolerant) to Lys357 (in susceptible) (Lu et al. 2014 ). A few genetic engineering approaches for developing the abiotic stress tolerance in rice are presented in Table 4 .

Genetic resources and molecular approaches of rice improvement

Rice is one of the most widely adapted crops due to the vast genetic diversity and its wild relatives (Singh et al. 2018). There are 22 wild and 2 cultivated species ( Oryza sativa  and  Oryza glaberrima) under the genus  Oryza (Vaughan 1989 ). The  O. sativa  covers most of the area under rice cultivation and has been classified into five major groups: indica , aromatic japonica , tropical japonica , temperate japonica and aus (Garris et al. 2005). These genomic resources conserved by national and international organizations have been used in crop improvement programs and also for basic research. A total of 132,000 accessions of rice were maintained by International Rice Genebank Collection Information System (IRGCIS) of International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) as on December 2019. A large number of indigenous, exotic and wild rice accessions are also maintained by National gene bank of India of National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), New Delhi. Among the crops, rice is the first to have complete genome sequence, which helped in developing genetic resources for gene discovery, molecular markers and crop improvement (IRGSP 2005). Recent efforts of sequencing of 3,000 rice accessions from 89 countries have helped in identification of superior alleles and haplotypes for rice breeding programs (T3RGP 2014). Genomic information of 3,010 diverse Asian cultivated rice including 3000 rice accessions of 3 K rice genome project was used to identify 29 million SNPs, 2.4 million small indels, 10,000 novel full-length protein-coding genes and more than 90 thousand structural variations, which will serve as an extremely important genetic resource for breeding and biotechnology research (Wang et al. 2018 ). Several databases and genomic resources of rice are available in public domain for gene/allele discovery, molecular marker designing and basic studies (Kamboj et al. 2020 ). These resources have facilitated the QTL discovery and gene cloning for marker-assisted breeding programs and transgenic research. Novel resources such as gene activation mutants, EMS mutants and T-DNA-tagged rice mutant populations are powerful genetic resources for functional genomics and crop improvement (Yi and An 2013 ; Mohapatra et al. 2014 ; Reddy et al. 2020 ). Recently, a genomic resource based on CRISPR/Cas9 (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats–associated nuclease 9) genome editing has been developed wherein more than 34,000 genes of rice have been targeted (Lu et al. 2017 ). Many high-throughput sequencing-based genomic resources for abiotic stress-related traits are discussed by Bansal et al. ( 2014 ). Transcriptomic and micro-RNA-based genomic resources for abiotic stress traits are also available in rice (Bansal et al. 2014 ; Mangrauthia et al. 2016 , 2017 ). Such resources have been utilized in various molecular approaches such as marker-assisted breeding, genome-wide association studies, cis-and transgenic and genome editing for crop improvement (Varshney et al. 2020 ). Marker-assisted selection and introgression have been used for developing biotic and abiotic stress-tolerant rice genotypes (Das et al. 2017 ). Three major bacterial blight resistance genes ( Xa21, xa13 and xa5 ) were introduced through marker-assisted breeding to produce a bacterial blight resistant rice cultivar, Improved Samba Mahsuri (Sundaram et al. 2008 ). Transgenic rice lines for various traits have been developed using a number of genes and genetic elements (Fraiture et al. 2016 ). Recently, genome editing is projected as the potential breeding technique due to its precision and efficiency (Aglawe et al. 2018 ). Several traits and genes of rice are being targeted and improved using the CRISPR/Cas technology of genome editing (Zafar et al. 2020 ).

Grain quality challenges in rice

Rice grain quality is a permutation of several traits such as appearance, cooking, nutritional and milling qualities (Yu et al. 2008 ). Several factors such as cultivars, production and harvesting conditions, post-harvest management, milling and marketing techniques determine the rice grain quality. Rice endosperm is composed of 80–90% starch with 6–28% amylose content and 5–7% proteins, which serve as energy and protein source of the global population especially in developing countries. The grain appearances vis-à-vis cooking, eating and milling quality are largely determined by the combination of several starch properties such as gelatinization temperature, amylose content and gel consistency (Bao et al. 2008 ). Various approaches including genetic and molecular utilized to improve the starch properties of rice have been extensively reviewed by various researchers (Fujita 2014 ; Birla et al. 2017 ). The off-putting nutritional value of rice proteins is mainly due to the deficiency in certain amino acids such as lysine and tryptophan (Ufaz and Galili 2008 ). Compared to maize, efforts towards increasing the content of deficient amino acids such as lysine and tryptophan have not been extensively attempted in rice due to limited genetic variability, and side-effects of nutrient enrichment on germination and abnormal plant growth. Also, due to the absence of expression of some of the enzymes of the carotenoid pathway, rice is not able to synthesize and accumulate sufficient quality of carotenoids. Therefore, efforts have been put forth to genetically alter the rice plants to produce golden rice that produces b-carotene in the endosperm giving rise to a characteristic yellow colour (Ye et al. 2000 ). Similarly, micro-nutrients such as Fe and Zn, vitamins such as folate and thiamine, antinutritional factor such as phytate and other bioactive compounds have been recently reviewed by Birla et al. ( 2017 ) and Custodio et al. ( 2019 ).

Owing to sufficient production, studies during the past have focussed towards quality traits including nutritional quality. It is usually agreed that rice quality depends on both genetic and environmental factors (Cheng et al. 2003 ). Increase in the night temperature is linked to poor grain quality such as decreased head rice ratio, increased chalkiness and reduced grain width (Shi et al. 2016 ; Li et al. 2018 ). Being complex polygenic traits, chalkiness and amylose content, protein content, grain length, grain width and aspect ratio of rice are highly influenced by environmental conditions such as light, temperature and humidity, and certain cultural practices particularly during the grain-filling stage (Siebenmorgen et al. 2013 ; Li et al. 2018 ). Similarly, fertilizer application, plant density and irrigation management especially during the grain-filling period significantly affect the rice grain quality (Huang et al. 2016 ; Wei et al. 2018 ). However, little is known about the role of optimized cultivation managements on rice grain quality (Zhang et al. 2019a ). Besides, deep flood irrigation has been shown to reduce the chalky grains due to the increased supply of carbohydrates to the panicles (Chiba et al. 2017 ). In the recent, several reports have suggested the significant harmful effect of global warming on crop quality (Morita et al. 2016 ; Ishigooka et al. 2017 ). Taken together, systematic work on rice cultivation in varying environmental conditions in combination with genetic studies has widened our current understanding of rice grain quality. Even though, there are significantly more challenges coupled with opportunities to work on enhancing the quality of rice grain, the various approaches to improve rice grain quality are explicitly shown in Fig.  6 .

Key intervention areas to ensure consumer pro high rice grain quality

Way forward with conservation agriculture and resource conservation technologies

Conservation agriculture (CA) is an alternate farming practice, which emphasizes on minimum soil disturbance, soil cover with crop residue (≥ 30%) and crop rotation (Hobbs et al. 2008 ). It has the potential to address the sustainability issues in rice production system. Many farmers partially adopted CA mainly in the form of zero-till-based direct seeding and direct rice transplantation on untilled or unpuddled field. The minimum soil disturbance component of CA or zero-till-based seeding provides multiple benefits of reducing the negative impact of tillage and heavy machinery on soil structure, while saving time, labour and fuel along with lesser harmful air pollutants (Sharma et al. 2003 ; Malik and Yadav 2008 ). Soil cover component of CA acts as an effective moisture conserving technique by reducing the evaporation rate. Moreover, it also provides physical protection to the soil from rainfall, runoff and wind-induced erosion, while improving the structure, organic carbon and physico-chemical properties of soil (Kassam et al. 2009 ; Rockström et al. 2009 ). The crop rotation in CA promotes the biodiversity and helps in soil nutrient balance and weed spectrum (Kumar et al. 2020a ). The threat of pest and disease incidence is also reduced with regular crop rotation (Farooq et al. 2011 ). The effects of CA practice on soil organic carbon, yield and other parameters under different cropping systems are presented in Table 5 . CA practice in rice-based cropping systems can provide a beneficial effect on soil properties like soil organic carbon, bulk density, soil compaction, microbial biomass, infiltration rate, soil enzymatic activities, macro- and water-stable aggregates, water productivity, etc., with a similar or higher yield than CT practice. Laik et al. ( 2014 ) reported 46–54% and 10–24% higher yield of wheat and rice, respectively, in wheat–cowpea–rice cropping system under CA over conventional practice. The water productivity and benefit–cost ratio were also higher under this cultivation practice. Gathala et al. ( 2015 ) concluded that it is uncertain to have yield advantage in rice-based cropping systems under CA establishment methods; however, in terms of cultivation cost, labour cost and net profit, CA-based cultivation methods are advantageous over CT practice. Haque et al. ( 2016 ) observed lesser cultivation cost and higher profit for minimum tillage unpuddled transplanted rice under CA as compared to conventionally grown rice. In a different study, Mohammad et al. ( 2018 ) reported higher crop and water productivity of DSR under CA over CT practice. Chaki et al. ( 2021 ) found that system production, water productivity and nitrogen use efficiency of wheat–mungbean–rice cropping system increased by 5.4, 40 and 5%, respectively, under CA over conventional practice in fine-textured soils. However, grain and water productivity of rice depleted under CA over conventional practice in coarse-textured soils. From the cited studies, it is evident that CA offers savings in time, labour, water and input cost, while improving the soil characteristics and diminishing GWP simultaneously. In the scenario of declining factor productivity coupled with climate change, it is extremely imperative to bring the rice crop under CA for long-term sustainability of crop production system. The use of RCTs such as leaf colour chart and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) sensors-based fertilizer application and electrostatic and variable rate spraying for chemical applications need to be integrated with CA for a sustainable rice cultivation system. Further research efforts are required on developing suitable rice cultivars and variety selection for CA and development of cost-effective RCTs such as zero-till rice transplanter and seeder integrated with pre-emergence herbicide applicator. The future studies on weed, nutrients and pest dynamics and quality aspects of rice under CA are desirable for effective weed and pest control and to have comparable rice yield as with PTR. In line with this, policy interventions, large-scale training and field-level demonstrations would also be required to accelerate the adoption of CA among farmers.

Conclusions

The continuous rice cultivation with traditional method imposed serious threats to natural resources and agricultural sustainability. In the scenario of declining factor productivity, crop response and water table and rising air pollution, researchers and policymakers need to intervene through a systematic and integrated approach to produce more rice with less water in a sustainable way. The cultivation of some alternative and lesser water requiring crops should be encouraged by various measures like incentives and minimum support price for the regions of light-textured soils and rainfed condition. Resource use efficiency needs to be enhanced through multi-dimensional approach on varietal development, soil and water management, adoption of resource conserving machines and need-based application of fertilizers and chemicals for sustainable rice cultivation in medium-to-heavy soils. The integrated resource conserving approach like delayed direct seeding of short duration, high-yielding and stress tolerant rice varieties with a zero-till seeder or transplanting such varieties with zero-till transplanter under CA with drip irrigation system should be encouraged for rice cultivation. However, more research studies and analysis are required to explore the yield aspect and profitability with promising results to convince the farmers for shifting from PTR to a new rice cultivation system. Policy reforms are needed to stop the subsidy on methods and systems that contribute to low water productivity on a system basis. Reforms on water security to users, the decentralization and privatization of water management functions to suitable levels, water pricing, markets in tradable property rights and introducing water conserving technologies for irrigation purposes should be in vogue.

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Kumar, N., Chhokar, R.S., Meena, R.P. et al. Challenges and opportunities in productivity and sustainability of rice cultivation system: a critical review in Indian perspective. CEREAL RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS 50 , 573–601 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42976-021-00214-5

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Research on the eco-efficiency of rice production and its improvement path: a case study from china.

1. Introduction

2. materials and methods, 2.1. study area and data, 2.2. agricultural life cycle assessment, 2.3. unexpected output super efficiency sbm model, 3.1. comprehensive index of the rice environmental impacts, 3.1.1. classification and characterization, 3.1.2. standardization and weighted evaluation, 3.2. eco-efficiency of rice production, 3.3. sensitivity analysis, 3.4. ways to improve the eco-efficiency of rice production, 4. discussion, 4.1. characteristics of the eco-efficiency of rice production, 4.2. improvement potential of the eco-efficiency of rice production, 4.3. uncertainty in the eco-efficiency of rice production, 5. conclusions and policy implications, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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Huang, M.; Zeng, L.; Liu, C.; Li, X.; Wang, H. Research on the Eco-Efficiency of Rice Production and Its Improvement Path: A Case Study from China. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022 , 19 , 8645. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19148645

Huang M, Zeng L, Liu C, Li X, Wang H. Research on the Eco-Efficiency of Rice Production and Its Improvement Path: A Case Study from China. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health . 2022; 19(14):8645. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19148645

Huang, Malan, Linlin Zeng, Chujie Liu, Xiaoyun Li, and Hongling Wang. 2022. "Research on the Eco-Efficiency of Rice Production and Its Improvement Path: A Case Study from China" International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19, no. 14: 8645. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19148645

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• Published: 14 October 2022

Two decades of rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines: A systematic review and research agenda for the social sciences

• Ginbert P. Cuaton   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5902-3173 1 &
• Laurence L. Delina   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8637-4609 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  9 , Article number:  372 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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While rice studies are abundant, they usually focus on macro-level rice production and yield data, genetic diversity, cultivar varieties, and agrotechnological innovations. Moreover, many of these studies are either region-wide or concentrated on countries in the Global North. Collecting, synthesizing, and analyzing the different themes and topic areas in rice research since the beginning of the 21st century, especially in the Global South, remain unaddressed areas. This study contributes to filling these research lacunae by systematically reviewing 2243 rice-related articles cumulatively written by more than 6000 authors and published in over 900 scientific journals. Using the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, this study screened and retrieved articles published from 2001 to 2021 on the various topics and questions surrounding rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines—two rice-producing and -consuming, as well as emerging economies in Southeast Asia. Using a combination of bibliometrics and quantitative content analysis, this paper discusses the productive, relevant, and influential rice scholars; key institutions, including affiliations, countries, and funders; important articles and journals; and knowledge hotspots in these two countries. It also discusses the contributions of the social sciences, highlights key gaps, and provides a research agenda across six interdisciplinary areas for future studies. This paper mainly argues that an interdisciplinary and comparative inquiry of potentially novel topic areas and research questions could deepen and widen scholarly interests beyond conventional natural science-informed rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines. Finally, this paper serves other researchers in their review of other crops in broader global agriculture.

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Introduction.

Rice feeds the majority of the world’s population and employs millions, especially in developing countries in the Global South (Muthayya et al., 2014 ). Rice consumption has increased globally over the last decade. Statista data show that, in the cropping year 2020/2021, the world population consumed about 504.3 million metric tons of rice, increasing from 437.18 million metric tons in 2008/2009 (Shabandeh, 2021 ). These data highlight the crop’s global contribution and importance, especially in realizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the blueprint for global prosperity (Gil et al., 2019 ). The SDGs call for systems transformation, including in agriculture, guided by the principles of sustainability and equity, driven by the leave-no-one-behind aphorism, to address the root causes of perennial poverty and chronic hunger.

Pathologist M. B. Waite ( 1915 ) pointed out that the apparent indicator of progress in modern agriculture is the application of scientific research and the subsequent modification and improvement of farming systems based on those research. For example, the Green Revolution resulted in increased agricultural production in developing countries due to the transfer of agrotechnological innovations from countries in the Global North to countries in the Global South. Although, we acknowledge that this project came with a cost (Glaeser, 2010 ; Pielke and Linnér, 2019 ; Pingali, 2012 ).

Regional rice studies have proliferated in Europe (Ferrero and Nguyen, 2004 ; Kraehmer et al., 2017 ), the Americas (Singh et al., 2017 ), Africa (Zenna et al., 2017 ), the Asia Pacific (Papademetriou et al., 2000 ), and South Asia (John and Fielding, 2014 ). Country studies on rice production have also emerged in Australia (Bajwa and Chauhan, 2017 ), China (Peng et al., 2009 ), and India (Mahajan et al., 2017 ). Scholars have also systematically reviewed rice’s phytochemical and therapeutic potentials (Sen et al., 2020 ), quality improvements (Prom-u-thai and Rerkasem, 2020 ), and its role in alleviating the effects of chronic diseases and malnutrition (Dipti et al., 2012 ).

These extant studies, however, are limited on at least three fronts. First, their foci were on rice production, yield, and operational practices and challenges at the macro level. Second, there have been zero attempts at synthesizing this corpus since the 21st century. Third, there are also no attempts at examining the various rice research areas that scholars, institutions, and countries need to focus on, especially in developing country contexts, and their nexuses with the social sciences. This paper addresses these gaps by unpacking and synthesizing multiple rice studies conducted in the emerging Southeast Asian economies of Indonesia and the Philippines from 2001 to 2021. A focus on these developing countries matters since they are home to over 35 million rice farmers (IRRI, 2013 ).

We conducted our review from the Scopus database, using a combination of bibliometric and quantitative content analyses. Section “Results and discussions” reports our results, where we discuss (1) the most relevant and influential rice scholars and their collaboration networks; (2) the most rice research productive institutions, including author affiliations, their countries, and their research funders; and (3) the most significant articles and journals in rice research. This section also identifies 11 topic areas belonging to four major themes of importance for rice research in the two countries. Section “Contributions from and research agenda for the social sciences” provides a research agenda, where we identify and discuss the contributions of our review in terms of future work. Despite the preponderance of rice research in the last two decades and more in Indonesia and the Philippines, contributions from the social sciences remain marginal. Thus, in the section “Conclusion”, we conclude that emphasis is needed on expanding and maximizing the contributions of social scientists given the many opportunities available, especially for conducting interdisciplinary and comparative rice research in these Southeast Asian countries.

Review methods and analytical approach

We used bibliometric and quantitative content analyses to systematically categorize and analyze more than two decades of academic literature on rice in Indonesia and the Philippines. Bibliometric methods, also known as bibliometrics, have grown to be influential in evaluating various research fields and topic areas. Bibliometrics mushroomed because of the increasing availability of online databases and new or improved analysis software (Dominko and Verbič, 2019 ). Bibliometrics quantitatively and statistically analyze research articles using their bibliographic data, such as authors, affiliations, funders, abstracts, titles, and keywords. These data are analyzed to identify and assess the development, maturity, research hotspots, knowledge gaps, and research trends (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017 ). For example, bibliometrics have been used in reviewing hydrological modeling methods (Addor and Melsen, 2019 ), business and public administration (Cuccurullo et al., 2016 ), and animals’ cognition and behavior (Aria et al., 2021 ).

This review article used bibliometrix , a machine-assisted program that offers multiple options and flexibility to map the literature comprehensively (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017 ). We run this program using R Studio version 4.1.2 (2021-11-01; “Bird Hippie”) for its source code readability, understandability, and easy-to-do computer programming (Cuaton et al., 2021 ). We used bibliometrix in three critical analytical phases: (a) importing and converting data to R format, (b) identifying our dataset’s collaboration networks and intellectual and conceptual structures, and (c) processing, presenting, and analyzing our dataset. Bibliometrix, however, is unable to produce specific data that we want to highlight in this paper; examples of these are our coding criteria on interdisciplinarity and author gender, where such information was not captured in the articles’ bibliographic data in Scopus. We addressed these issues by conducting a quantitative content analysis (QCA) of our dataset. QCA is a method to record, categorize, and analyze textual, visual, or aural materials (Coe and Scacco, 2017 ). QCA has been applied in other reviews, such as in energy research development in the social sciences (Sovacool, 2014 ), the concepts of energy justice (Jenkins et al., 2021 ), and in examining agricultural issues in Botswana (Oladele and Boago, 2011 ) and Bangladesh (Khatun et al., 2021 ).

Search strategies

We constructed our dataset from the Scopus database, which we accessed via our institution’s online library on 14 November 2021. Scopus is a scientific database established in 2004 and owned by Elsevier Ltd. (Elsevier, 2021 ). We excluded other databases, such as Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, Web of Science, and EBSCO, suggesting one potential bias in our review (Waltman, 2016 ; Zupic and Čater, 2015 ). Our decision to exclusively use Scopus arises from two main reasons. First, the database has broader coverage than others, including the abovementioned (Falagas et al., 2008 ). Scopus includes new and emerging journals published in developing countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, our focus countries. Second, Scopus has a user-friendly interface and its search options allow researchers to flexibly explore its universe of indexed articles based on authors, institutions, titles, abstracts, keywords, and references (Donthu et al., 2021 ).

We followed the PRISMA 2020 Guideline (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses) (Page et al., 2021 ) in our search for potential rice-related studies in Indonesia and the Philippines (see Fig. 1 ). We used the initial search string: “rice” AND “Indonesia*” OR “Philippine*” (asterisk or “*” was used as a wildcard search strategy) and limited the year coverage from 2001 to 2021. Our first round of searches resulted in 3846 documents (results as of 14 November 2021). We filtered these documents by including only peer-reviewed, full-text English articles on rice. We did not include any documents from the grey literature (e.g., news items, press releases, government or corporate reports), and other document types indexed in Scopus such as reviews, books, conference papers, errata, comments, editorials, and short reports.

Our initial result of 3846 documents (results as of 14 November 2021) was filtered by including only peer-reviewed, full-text English articles on rice, resulting in 2243 eligible documents.

We also excluded articles with irrelevant keywords by using the following combined queries:

This resulted in 2243 eligible documents. We downloaded these documents as raw files in BibTex format and imported them to Biblioshiny , a web interface in Bibliometrix, where they were further filtered. Our verified final dataset comprises 2243 full-text English articles cumulatively written by 6893 authors and published across 909 journals (see Table 1 ).

Structure and analytical approach

We examined the authors’ profiles based on their gender, relevance in the study, and global impact. For gender, we coded them into ‘man,’ ‘woman,’ and ‘undetermined’ because some did not put enough information that helps in gender identification. We identified their gender by counter-checking their Scopus profiles to their verified accounts in Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Publons/Web of Science, or institutional profiles. We measured the authors’ relevance and impact against their (a) productivity, (b) citations, and (c) H-indices. We acknowledge, however, that some Filipino and Indonesian scholars, whose papers may not be indexed in Scopus, could also be prolific based on different parameters, but we excluded them. We proceeded to map the collaboration networks of these authors to identify “who works with whom on what.” A collaboration network illustrates nodes (circle shape) as authors and links (connecting lines) as co-authorships (Glänzel and Schubert, 2005 ).

Institutions, countries, funders

Following Sovacool ( 2014 ), we categorized the authors’ institutions into four: (1) University and research included authors who are researchers, instructors/lecturers/professors, other academic faculty from various non-university research think tanks, institutes, and national and local research centers; (2) Government consisted country or state departments, bureaus, ministries, and other government regulatory bodies; (3) Interest groups and NGOs included intergovernmental bodies, such as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Office (FAO) and international organizations like the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and Oxfam; and (4) Banking and finance encompassed players from the finance sector, including multilateral development banks such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB), World Bank, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). After coding and categorizing, we analyzed the authors’ institutional collaboration networks.

We identified the country’s productivity and coded them by global region based on their geographical location: (a) Asia, (b) Australia, New Zealand, and South Pacific, (c) Europe, (d) North America, (e) South America, and (f) Africa. We did this to show how various countries have been researching rice in Indonesia and the Philippines since the 21st century.

We then constructed a country collaboration map as a visual macro-representation of countries working together on rice research using these data. Bibliometrix, however, measured the country’s productivity based on the corresponding authors’ affiliations. We, therefore, noted two critical points here. First, many corresponding authors may have multiple institutional affiliations. For example, one corresponding author may belong to more than two affiliations (e.g., a corresponding Filipino author may have concurrent institutional affiliations in Japan, Australia, and New Zealand). Second, the corresponding authors may not necessarily be nationals of that country. Note that the unit of analysis is based on the corresponding authors’ institutional affiliations at the time of publication and not on their country/ies of citizenship or nationality. Despite these, our findings still provide insight into the macro-level productivity of countries conducting rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines.

We analyzed the funders using Scopus’ in-house Analytics Tool and determined their relevance based on the number of articles mentioning them in the Funding source or Acknowledgment section in the paper. We categorized the funders into six: (1) government (e.g., ministries, departments, or regulatory agencies), (2) research (e.g., research councils, research centers, and national academies), (3) foundations and non-government organizations (NGOs), (4) universities, (5) private companies and corporations, and (6) intergovernmental organizations/IGOs, including multilateral development banks.

Articles and journals

In terms of interdisciplinarity, we coded the articles as (a) interdisciplinary, (b) disciplinary, or (c) unidentified by using the authors’ department or division affiliation/s as a proxy to determine their disciplinary training. We coded an article as interdisciplinary if it belonged to any of the three criteria: (1) it had an author that had training or belonged to a department/division in at least two conventional disciplines (e.g., agriculture, anthropology, sociology, biology); (2) it had an author that had a self-identified interdisciplinary department (e.g., interdisciplinary division, sustainability, agriculture economics, etc.); or (3) it had at least two authors with different disciplinary training or expertise (e.g., business and economics; crop science and political science, etc.). We coded an article as disciplinary if its author/s had only belonged to one conventional department/division affiliation (e.g., Division of Agriculture, Department of Economics, Division of Environmental Science, etc.). On the other hand, we coded an article as undetermined when the authors had only indicated the name of their institutions or did not indicate their departmental or division affiliations (e.g., only the University of the Philippines, IRRI, Universitas Gadja Mada, etc.).

We examined the articles based on their local relevance and global influence. Bibliometrix measured the articles’ relevance based on their “local citations” or citations received from the 2243 articles of our sample dataset. We did this to determine which papers are considered relevant by authors studying various areas of rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines. Global influence is measured based on the articles’ citations from the global research community or other scientific works beyond our sample dataset. We also conducted a co-citation analysis of the cited references. Co-citation is the frequency by which articles cite together two or more articles relevant to the topic areas of inquiry (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017 ). Bibliometrix had identified some co-cited articles published before our timeline of interest (i.e., pre-2001) which provide scholars with a more profound understanding of rice research in the two countries.

On the other hand, Bibliometrix identified the most relevant journals based on the number of papers the journals had published and the local citations of the articles. These data guide readers and researchers on which journals to look for on rice studies in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Knowledge hotspots

Bibliometrix creates a thematic map that allows researchers to identify which study areas have been adequately explored and which areas need further investigation or re-investigation to identify knowledge hotspots and research gaps (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017 ). Della Corte et al. ( 2019 , pp. 5–6) discussed the major themes in Bibliometrix in the following:

“Themes in the lower-right quadrant are the Basic Themes , characterized by high centrality and low density. These themes are considered essential for a research field and concerned with general topics across different research areas.

Themes in the upper-right quadrant are the Motor Themes , characterized by high centrality and density. Motor themes are considered developed and essential for the research field.

Themes in the upper-left quadrant are the highly developed and isolated themes or Niche Themes . They have well-developed internal links (high density) but unimportant external links, which could be interpreted as having limited importance for the field (low centrality).

Themes in the lower-left quadrant are known as Emerging or Declining Themes . They have low centrality and density, making them weakly developed and marginal.”

Contributions from and research agenda for the social sciences

As interdisciplinary environmental and social scientists, we also focused our review on the social studies of rice in the two countries. This section highlighted the gaps between the natural and the social sciences in rice research and advanced a research agenda for interdisciplinary and comparative social scientists.

Limitations

As in any systematic review, we acknowledge certain limitations to our work. We discuss four of these.

First, to keep a certain level of reliability, we focused only on peer-reviewed full-length research articles written in the English language and indexed in the Scopus database. Therefore, we may have excluded some relevant articles, including those written in Filipino, Indonesian, and other local or indigenous languages and published in local or international journals but are not indexed in Scopus. Our review also excluded conference papers, commentaries, book reviews, book chapters, conference reviews, data papers, errata, letters, notes, and non-academic publications like policy briefings, reports, and white papers.

Second, in our quantitative content analysis, we acknowledge the highly cis-heteronormative approach we used in coding the author’s gender as “man” or “woman.” We identified these genders from the names and pictures of the authors in their verified Scopus, Publons/ Web of Science, and institutional profiles. It is not our deliberate intention to neglect the varying genders of researchers and scientists beyond the traditional binary of man or woman.

Third, we recognize that our analysis cannot directly identify how much each funder provided as the unit of analysis in bibliometrix may depend on how prolific researchers were in publishing articles despite smaller funds. For instance, one research project supported by Funder A with US$1 million may have published only one article based on their project design or the funder's requirement. Since the authors published only one paper from this project, the data could show that Funder A only funded one research. Another research project, supported by Funder B, with only US$300,000 in funding, may have published more than five papers; therefore, more articles counted as funded by Funder B. This issue is not within the scope of our review.

Lastly, it should be noted that the future research works we discussed were highly influenced by our research interests and the general overview of the literature, and thus neither intend to cover nor aim to discuss the entire research topics that other scholars could study.

Despite these limitations, we strongly argue that our review provided relevant insights and proposed potentially novel topic areas and research questions for other scholars to explore, especially social scientists, in deepening and widening rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines. To end, we hope that researchers heed our call to conduct more interdisciplinary and comparative rice-related studies in these two emerging Southeast Asian countries.

Results and discussions

Our dataset comprises 2243 peer-reviewed journal articles cumulatively written by 6893 authors who cited around 80,000 cumulative references. The average annual publications from 2001 to 2013 were only 57 papers but elevated to hundreds beginning in 2014 (Fig. 2 ).

The average number of annual publications on rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines from 2001 to 2013 was only 57 papers but elevated to hundreds beginning in 2014.

Of the 159 authors, one had a duplicate profile; thus, we identified 158 authors publishing on rice studies; the majority (66%) are men. The top 50 most prolific scholars produced a little over 25% (567 articles) of the total articles. Australian ecologist Finbarr Horgan topped this list ( n  = 21), followed by Bas Bouman and Grant Singleton—each with 20 articles. The top 10 authors with the highest number of publications have affiliations with the IRRI, the University of the Philippines, the University of Gadjah Mada, and the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice). For the full list of prolific scholars with at least 10 articles published, see Supplementary Table 1 .

In terms of the authors with the most local citations, although Finbarr Horgan has the most documents, Johan Iskandar ( n  = 36 citations) from the Universitas Padjadjaran, who studies rice genetic diversity, is the most cited. Local citations refer to the citations received by authors from our sample dataset of 2243 articles. Muhidin Muhidin from the Universitas Halu Oleo and Ruhyat Partasasmita from the Universitas Padjadjaran, followed him with 30 and 28 local citations, respectively. Common to these three authors are their Biology background/expertise and interest in rice genetic diversity. To check the top 20 most locally cited scholars, refer to Supplementary Table 2 .

The H-index is the author-level measure of publications’ productivity and citation impacts (Hirsch, 2005 ). Bas Bouman (H-index = 18) leads the top 10 scholars among rice-related researchers in Indonesia and the Philippines. Yoshimichi Fukuta (H index = 13) and Shaobing Peng (H index = 13) followed him. These three authors are affiliated with or have collaborated with the IRRI. To check the top 10 scholars with the highest H-indices, refer to Supplementary Table 3 .

Figure 3 reveals the top 80 authors who collaborate across eight major clusters of rice research. The Red cluster shows Finbarr Horgan as the most prominent author with at least four significant collaborators in pest management, specifically on rice stemborers (Horgan et al., 2021 ), anthropods’ biodiversity in tropical rice ecosystems (Horgan et al., 2019 ), and virulence adaptations of rice leafhoppers (Horgan et al., 2018 ). In the Purple Cluster, Yoshimichi Fukuta has multiple publications with at least six collaborators in the study of rice blast (Ebitani et al., 2011 ; Kadeawi et al., 2021 ; Mizobuchi et al., 2014 ). In the Brown cluster, Bernard Canapi from the IRRI has collaborated with at least five scholars in the study of rice insect pest management (Cabasan et al., 2019 ; Halwart et al., 2014 ; Litsinger et al., 2011 ), farmers’ preference for rice traits (Laborte et al., 2015 ), and the drivers and consequences of genetic erosion in traditional rice agroecosystems in the Philippines (Zapico et al., 2020 ). The Gray cluster shows that Siti Herlinda has collaborated with at least four scholars to study anthropods in freshwater swamp rice fields (Hanif et al., 2020 ; Herlinda et al., 2020 ) and the benefits of biochar on rice growth and yield (Lakitan et al., 2018 ).

The authors’ collaboration networks show eight major clusters of rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Institutions

Author affiliations.

In terms of institutional types, Fig. 4 shows that most rice researchers in Indonesia and the Philippines have affiliations with “University and research.” Figure 5 shows the top 20 institutions in terms of research productivity led by the IRRI, the University of the Philippines System, the PhilRice, the Institute Pertanian Bogor/IPB University, and the University of Gadja Mada. These 20 institutions produced 66% of the articles in our dataset.

The majority of rice researchers in Indonesia and the Philippines have affiliations with “University and research”.

The top 5 most productive institutions in terms of rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines are the IRRI, the University of the Philippines System, the PhilRice, the Institute Pertanian Bogor/IPB University, and the University of Gadja Mada.

Scholars affiliated with the IRRI have written the most papers (at least 19% or 358 articles) in our dataset. The range of topics covers both regional and country studies. Some regional examples include the drivers of consumer demand for packaged rice and rice fragrance in South and Southeast Asia (Bairagi et al., 2020 ; Bairagi, Gustafson et al., 2021 ). Country studies, for example, include an investigation of rice farming in Central Java, Indonesia (Connor et al., 2021 ), the cultural significance of heirloom rice in Ifugao in the Philippines (Bairagi, Custodio et al., 2021 ), and the distributional impacts of the 2019 Philippine rice tariffication policy (Balié and Valera, 2020 ).

The University of the Philippines System, with rice scholars affiliated with their campuses in Los Baños, Diliman, Mindanao, and Manila, produced the next largest number of papers (more than 200 or 10%) on topics about rice pests and parasites (Horgan et al., 2019 , 2021 ; Vu et al., 2018 ), weed control (Awan et al., 2014 , 2015 ; Fabro and Varca, 2012 ), and climate change impacts on rice farming (Alejo and Ella, 2019 ; Ducusin et al., 2019 ; Gata et al., 2020 ). Social studies of rice conducted by the University of the Philippines researchers include indigenous knowledge on climate risk management (Ruzol et al., 2020 , 2021 ), management options in extreme weather events (Lopez and Mendoza, 2004 ), agroecosystem change (Aguilar et al., 2021 ; Neyra-Cabatac et al., 2012 ), and the development and change over time of rice production landscapes (Santiago and Buot, 2018 ; Tekken et al., 2017 ).

PhilRice, a government-owned corporation under the Department of Agriculture (Official Gazette of the Philippines, 2021 ), is the third most prolific rice research-producing institution (122 papers) on topics ranging from nematodes or rice worms (Gergon et al., 2001 , 2002 ) and arthropods (invertebrates found in rice paddies) (Dominik et al., 2018 ), hybrid rice (Perez et al., 2008 ; Xu et al., 2002 ), alternate wetting-and-drying technology (Lampayan et al., 2015 ; Palis et al., 2017 ), and community development strategies on rice productions (Romanillos et al., 2016 ).

The IPB University, a public agrarian university in Bogor, Indonesia, investigates rice productivity and sustainability (Arif et al., 2012 ; Mucharam et al., 2020 ; Setiawan et al., 2013 ), irrigation (Nugroho et al., 2018 ; Panuju et al., 2013 ), extreme weather events such as drought (Dulbari et al., 2021 ), floods (Wakabayashi et al., 2021 ), and emerging social issues such as food security (Putra et al., 2020 ), land-use change (Chrisendo et al., 2020 ; Munajati et al., 2021 ), and sustainability (Mizuno et al., 2013 ). This university has 23 research centers, including those which focus on environmental research; agricultural and village development; engineering applications in tropical agriculture; Southeast Asian food and agriculture; and agrarian studies.

Universitas Gadja Maja in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, hosts 21 research centers, including its Agrotechnology Innovation Centre. It carries out research incubation and development activities, product commercialization, and integration of agriculture, animal husbandry, energy, and natural resources into a sustainable Science Techno Park. Some of their published studies focused on drought-tolerant rice cultivars (Salsinha et al., 2020 , 2021 ; Trijatmiko et al., 2014 ), farmers’ technical efficiency (Mulyani et al., 2020 ; Widyantari et al., 2018 , 2019 ), systems of rice intensification (Arif et al., 2015 ; Syahrawati et al., 2018 ), and climate change adaptation (Ansari et al., 2021 ).

In terms of institutional collaboration, the IRRI tops the list with at least eleven collaborators (Fig. 6 ), including the Japan International Center for Agricultural Sciences, the PhilRice, the University of the Philippines System, and the Indonesian Center for Rice Research.

The IRRI, as an international organization focused on many aspects of rice, is not surprising to have the greatest number of institutional collaborators ( n  = 11 institutions).

Rice studies’ authors are from at least 79 countries; the majority of them are working in Asia (79%), followed by Europe (13%) and North America (9%). At least 90% of rice scholars are in Indonesia, and more than 51% have affiliations in the Philippines, followed by Japan, the USA, and China. For the list of the top 20 most productive countries researching rice in Indonesia and the Philippines, see Supplementary Table 4 . Figure 7 shows a macro-level picture of how countries have collaborated on rice-related projects in Indonesia and the Philippines since 2001, suggesting that rice research in both countries has benefited from international partnerships.

A macro-level picture of how countries have collaborated on rice-related projects in Indonesia and the Philippines since 2001. It suggests that rice research in both countries has benefited from international partnerships.

Only around 47% (1050 studies) of our dataset acknowledged their funding sources, where most received financial support either from governments (45%), research (27%), or university funders (16%) (Fig. 8 ). To see the top 15 funders that supported at least 10 rice-related research projects in Indonesia and the Philippines from 2001 to 2021, refer to Supplementary Table 5 . Of over 150 rice research funders, Indonesia’s Ministry of Education, Culture, and Research (formerly the Ministry of Research and Technology) funded ~6% (62 out of 1050 studies). The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology came in as the second and third largest funders, respectively.

The majority of rice research projects in Indonesia and the Philippines were funded by governments (45%), research (27%), and university institutions (16%).

Half of all articles in the dataset were borne out of interdisciplinary collaboration. More than a quarter of the articles, however, were unidentified, showing an apparent undercount of the total number of disciplinary collaborations. Most of these collaborative pieces of work (~61%) belong to the natural science subject areas of agricultural and biological sciences; biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology; and environmental science (see Table 2 ). Note that the cumulative number of articles in Table 2 is more than the total number of the sample dataset since an article may belong to multiple subject areas as indicated by its authors in Scopus. Less than 9% (354) of all papers were written by social scientists, highlighting their marginal contribution to rice research. The social studies of rice can increase our understanding of the many facets of rice production, including their socio-political, economic, and cultural aspects.

Our review shows that there are 10 major networks of rice research co-citations (Fig. 9 ). The papers by Bouman et al. ( 2005 ), Bouman et al. ( 2007 ), Bouman and Tuong ( 2001 ), and Tuong and Bouman ( 2003 ) were co-cited by scholars studying the relationship between water scarcity management vis-à-vis rice growth and yield (the purple cluster in Fig. 9 ). Papers by Yoshida et al. ( 2009 ), De Datta ( 1981 ), and Peng et al. ( 1999 ) were co-cited by scholars researching the genetic diversity, yield, and principles and practices of rice production in Indonesia (the red cluster in Fig. 9 ). Papers by Ou ( 1985 ), Mackill and Bonman ( 1992 ), Sambrook et al. ( 1989 ), Kauffman et al. ( 1973 ), Iyer and McCouch ( 2004 ), and Mew ( 1987 ) were considered essential references in studying rice diseases (blue cluster in Fig. 9 ). The top-cited article on rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines, based on their overall global citations, is a study on water-efficient and water-saving irrigation (Belder et al., 2004 ). This study detailed alternative options for typical water management in lowland rice cultivation, where fields are continuously submerged, hence requiring a continuous large amount of water supply (Belder et al., 2004 ). Global citations refer to the citations received by the articles within and beyond our sample dataset of 2243 articles. To see the top 10 most globally cited articles on rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines, refer to Supplementary Table 6 .

There are 10 major networks of rice research co-citations in Indonesia and the Philippines.

The journal Biodiversitas: Journal of Biological Diversity published the most number of papers on rice research in the two countries. Biodiversitas publishes papers “dealing with all biodiversity aspects of plants, animals, and microbes at the level of gene, species, ecosystem, and ethnobiology” (Biodiversitas, 2021 ). Following its indexing in Scopus in 2014, Biodiversitas has increasingly published rice studies, most of which were authored by Indonesian researchers. To see the top 10 most relevant journals for rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines based on the number of documents published since 2001, refer to Supplementary Table 7 .

Based on their local citations, the journals Field Crops Research , Theoretical & Applied Genetics , and Science are the most relevant. Field Crops Research focuses on crop ecology, crop physiology, and agronomy of field crops for food, fiber, feed, medicine, and biofuel. Theoretical and Applied Genetics publishes original research and review articles in all critical areas of modern plant genetics, plant genomics, and plant biotechnology. Science is the peer-reviewed academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and one of the world’s top academic journals. To see the top 30 most relevant journals for rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines based on the number of local citations, refer to Supplementary Table 8 .

The most used keywords found in 2243 rice research papers published between 2001 and 2021 in Indonesia and the Philippines are food security, climate change, drought, agriculture, irrigation, genetic diversity, sustainability, technical efficiency, and production (Fig. 10 ). We found 11 clusters across four significant themes of rice research in these countries (Fig. 11 ).

The most used keywords found in 2243 rice research papers published between 2001 and 2021 in Indonesia and the Philippines are food security, climate change, drought, agriculture, irrigation, genetic diversity, sustainability, technical efficiency, and production.

There are four major themes composed of 11 clusters of rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines since 2001.

Basic themes

We identified four major clusters under ‘basic themes’ (refer to Fig. 11 ):

The Red Cluster on studies in the Philippines related to rice yield and productivity, drought, nitrogen, the Green Revolution, and the use and potential of biomass;

The Blue Cluster on studies in Indonesia related to food security, climate change, agriculture, upland rice, irrigation, technical efficiency, and sustainability vis-à-vis rice production;

The Green Cluster on rice genetic diversity, bacterial blight diseases, resistant rice genes, aerobic rice, and brown planthoppers; and

The Gray Cluster on the nutritional aspects of rice, including studies on biofortified rice cultivars.

Agriculture suffers from climate change impacts and weather extremes. Rice researchers in Indonesia and the Philippines are identifying drought-tolerant rice cultivars that can produce high yields in abiotic stress-prone environments (Afa et al., 2018 ; Niones et al., 2021 ). These hybrid cultivars are vital for increasing rice productivity, meeting production demand, and feeding the growing Filipino and Indonesian populations (Kumar et al., 2021 ; Lapuz et al., 2019 ). Researchers have also looked at alternative nutrient and water management strategies that farmers can use, especially those in rainfed lowland areas during drought (Banayo, Bueno et al., 2018 ; Banayo, Haefele et al., 2018 ). There were also studies on the socio-cultural dynamics under which farmers adapt to droughts, such as how past experiences of hazards influence farmers’ perceptions of and actions toward drought (Manalo et al., 2020 ).

Motor themes

We identified three significant clusters of ‘motor themes’ (refer to Fig. 11 ):

The Pink Cluster on yield loss and integrated pest management of rice fields;

The Blue-Green Cluster on biodiversity, ecosystem services, remote sensing, and water productivity; and

The Orange Cluster on the antioxidant properties of rice bran and black rice.

In both countries, pests, including weeds (Awan et al., 2014 , 2015 ), insects (Horgan et al., 2018 , 2021 ), and rodents (Singleton, 2011 ; Singleton et al., 2005 , 2010 ), have significant impacts on yield loss in rice production and human health. To address these, many farmers have embraced chemical-heavy pest management practices to prevent yield loss and increase economic benefits. Pesticides began their use in Indonesia and the Philippines and rapidly expanded from the 1970s to the 1980s (Resosudarmo, 2012 ; Templeton and Jamora, 2010 ). However, indiscriminate use of pesticides caused an ecological imbalance that exacerbated pest problems (Templeton and Jamora, 2010 ) and contributed to farmers’ acute and chronic health risks (Antle and Pingali, 1994 ; Pingali and Roger, 1995 ).

Integrated pest management was introduced, applied, and studied in both countries to address these issues. This approach combines multiple compatible pest control strategies to protect crops, reduce pesticide use, and decrease farming costs (Gott and Coyle, 2019 ). For example, Indonesia’s 1989 National Integrated Pest Management Program trained hundreds of thousands of farmers and agricultural officials about its principles, techniques, and strategies (Resosudarmo, 2012 ). In the Philippines, the government of then-President Fidel V. Ramos (1992–1996) prohibited using hazardous pesticides and instituted a “multi-pronged approach to the judicious use of pesticides” (Templeton and Jamora, 2010 , p. 1). President Ramos’ suite of policies included deploying Integrated Pest Management “as a national program to encourage a more ecologically sound approach to pest control” (Templeton and Jamora, 2010 , p. 1). This pesticide policy package benefited the Philippine government in terms of private health costs avoided (Templeton and Jamora, 2010 ).

To address weed problems, farmers traditionally use manual weeding, a labor-intensive practice. However, as labor costs for manual weeding increased, herbicide use became economically attractive to farmers (Beltran et al., 2012 ). Herbicide experiments were made to address common rice weeds including barnyard grass ( Echinochloa crus-galli ) (Juliano et al., 2010 ), crowfoot grass ( Dactyloctenium aegyptium ) (Chauhan, 2011 ), three-lobe morning glory ( Ipomoea triloba ) (Chauhan and Abugho, 2012 ), and jungle rice ( Echinochloa colona ) (Chauhan and Johnson, 2009 ). Knowledge gained from these experiments contributed to the development of integrated weed management strategies.

Yet, many factors come into play when farmers decide to use herbicides. Beltran et al. ( 2013 ) reported that farmers’ age, household size, and irrigation use are significant determinants of adopting herbicides as an alternative to manual weeding. Beltran et al. ( 2013 ) further showed that economic variables, like the price of the herbicide, household income, and access to credit, determined farmers’ level of herbicide use (Beltran et al., 2013 ). Their study highlights the complex decision-making process and competing factors affecting weed management in the Philippines.

Apart from weeds, insects, like brown planthoppers ( Nilaparvata lugens ) and green leafhoppers ( Cicadella viridis ) and their accompanying diseases, affect rice production. In Java, Indonesia, Triwidodo ( 2020 ) reported a significant influence between the insecticide use scheme and the brown planthopper ( Nilaparvata lugens ) attack rates in rice fields. Brown planthopper attacks increased depending on the frequency of pesticide application, their varieties, and volume (Triwidodo, 2020 ). In the Philippines, Kim and colleagues ( 2019 ) developed a rice tungro epidemiological model for a seasonal disaster risk management approach to insect infestation.

Some social studies of integrated pest management included those that looked at the cultural practices that mitigate insect pest losses (Litsinger et al., 2011 ) and farmers’ knowledge, attitudes, and methods to manage rodent populations (Stuart et al., 2011 ). Other social scientists evaluated the value of amphibians as pest controls, bio-monitors for pest-related health outcomes, and local food and income sources (Propper et al., 2020 ).

Niche themes

We identified two ‘niche themes’ consisting of studies related to (a) temperature change and (b) organic rice production (refer to Fig. 11 ). Temperature change significantly affects rice farming. In the Philippines, Stuecker et al. ( 2018 ) found that El Niño-induced soil moisture variations negatively affected rice production from 1987–2016. According to one experiment, high night temperature stress also affect rice yield and metabolic profiles (Schaarschmidt et al., 2020 ). In Indonesia, a study suggests that introducing additional elements, such as Azolla, fish, and ducks, into the rice farming system may enhance rice farmers’ capacity to adapt to climate change (Khumairoh et al., 2018 ). Another study produced a rainfall model for Malang Regency using Spatial Vector Autoregression. This model is essential as rainfall pattern largely determines the cropping pattern of rice and other crops in Indonesia (Sumarminingsih, 2021 ).

Studies on organic rice farming in the Philippines include resource-poor farmers’ transition from technological to ecological rice farming (Carpenter, 2003 ) and the benefits of organic agriculture in rice agroecosystems (Mendoza, 2004 ). Other studies on organic rice focused on its impacts on agricultural development (Broad and Cavanagh, 2012 ) and climate resilience (Heckelman et al., 2018 ). In Indonesia, Martawijaya and Montgomery ( 2004 ) found that the local demand for organic rice produced in East Java was insufficient to generate revenue enough to cover its production costs. In West Java, Komatsuzaki and Syuaib ( 2010 ) found that organic rice farming fields have higher soil carbon storage capacity than fields where rice is grown conventionally. In Bali, farmers found it challenging to adopt organic rice farming vis-à-vis the complex and often contradictory and contested administration of the Subaks (MacRae and Arthawiguna, 2011 ) and the challenges they have to confront in marketing their produce (Macrae, 2011 ).

Emerging or declining themes

We identified two clusters of ‘emerging/declining themes’ or areas of rice research that are weakly developed and marginal (refer to Fig. 11 ). The Purple Cluster (emerging) studies rice straw, rice husk, methane, and rice cultivation, while the Light Blue Cluster (declining) pertains to local rice research.

In this section, we present and discuss the contributions of the social sciences, highlight key gaps, and provide a research agenda across six interdisciplinary areas for future studies. In Table 3 , we summarized the various topic areas that other scholars could focus on in their future studies of rice in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Economic, political, and policy studies

Political scientist Ernest A. Engelbert ( 1953 ) was one of the earliest scholars to summarize the importance of studying agricultural economics, politics, and policies. Engelbert ( 1953 ) identified three primary reasons scholars and laypeople alike need to understand the nature of political processes in agriculture. First, the rapid change and highly contested political environment where agriculture operates often places agriculture last on national policy agenda. Second, the formulation of agricultural policies intersects with contemporary national and economic contexts by which these policies revolve. Third, understanding the political processes around agriculture can help avoid political pressures and machinations aimed at undermining agricultural development.

Politics play a crucial role in better understanding rice- and agriculture-related policies, their evolution, dynamics, challenges, developments, and futures. Grant ( 2012 , p. 271) aptly asks, “Who benefits [from government policies, regulations, and programs]?” . Knowing, understanding, and answering this question is crucial since policymaking is a highly contested process influenced and negotiated not only by farmers and decision-makers but also by other interest groups, such as people’s organizations and non-government organizations. On the other hand, understanding macro- and micro-economic government arrangements come hand-in-hand in analyzing how policies impact farmers and consumers. Using tariffs as an example, Laiprakobsup ( 2014 , p. 381) noted the effects of government interventions in the agrarian market:

“… when the government implements consumer subsidy programs by requiring the farmers to sell their commodities at a cheaper price, it transfers the farmers’ incomes that they were supposed to earn to the consumers. Moreover, the government transfers tax burdens to the farmers via export taxes in that the agricultural industry is likely to purchase the farmers’ commodities as cheaply as possible in order to make up for its cost.”

The two countries have compelling economic, political, and policy-oriented rice studies. Some examples of this type of research in the Philippines are the following. Intal and Garcia ( 2005 ) argued that the price of rice had been a significant determinant in election results since the 1950s. Fang ( 2016 ) analyzed how the Philippines’ colonial history bolstered an oligarchy system, where landed elite politicians and patronage politics perpetuated corruption to the detriment of rice farmers. Balié and Valera ( 2020 ) examined rice trade policy reforms’ domestic and international impacts. San Juan ( 2021 ) contends that the 2019 Rice Tariffication Law of the Philippines only encouraged the country to rely on imports and failed to make the local rice industry more competitive.

In Indonesia, some political studies on rice production are the following. Putra et al. ( 2020 ) analyzed how urbanization affected food consumption, food composition, and farming performance. Noviar et al. ( 2020 ) provided evidence that households in the rice sub-sector have achieved an insufficient level of commercialization in their rice production. Rustiadi et al. ( 2021 ) investigated the impacts of land incursions over traditionally rice farming regions due to Jakarta’s continuous expansion. Satriawan and Shrestha ( 2018 ) evaluated how Indonesian households participated in the Raskin program, a nationwide rice price subsidy scheme for the poor. Misdawita et al. ( 2019 ) formulated a social accounting matrix and used a microsimulation approach to assess the impacts of food prices on the Indonesian economy.

Future work

Social science researchers could further explore and compare the local, regional, and national similarities and differences of the abovementioned issues or conduct novel research related to land-use change, land management, urbanization, food and agricultural policies, trade policies, irrigation governance, and price dynamics. Comparative social studies of rice could also lead to meaningful results. As social policy scholar Linda Hantrais noted:

“Comparisons can lead to fresh, exciting insights and a deeper understanding of issues that are of central concern in different countries. They can lead to the identification of gaps in knowledge and may point to possible directions that could be followed and about which the researcher may not previously have been aware. They may also help to sharpen the focus of analysis of the subject under study by suggesting new perspectives.” (Hantrais, 1995 , p. n/a).

Sociological, anthropological, and cultural studies

Biologists dominated agricultural research until the mid-1960s (Doorman, 1991 ). Agriculture, in other words, was no social scientist’s business. However, this situation gradually changed when governments and scholars realized the long-term impacts of the Green Revolution from the 1950s to the 1980s, which underscores that the development, transfer, and adoption of new agrotechnology, especially in developing countries, is driven not only by techno-biological factors but also by the socio-economic, political, and cultural realities under which the farmers operate. Since then, sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural scholars have become indispensable in answering the “how”, “what”, and “why” agrarian communities follow, adopt, utilize, or, in some cases, prefer local/traditional production technologies over the technological and scientific innovations developed by engineers, biologists, geneticists, and agriculturists. Nyle C. Brady, a soil scientist and the former Director-General of the IRRI pointed out:

“… we increasingly recognize that factors relating directly to the farmer, his family, and his community must be considered if the full effects of agricultural research are to be realized. This recognition has come partly from the participation of anthropologists and other social scientists in interdisciplinary teams … during the past few years.” (IRRI, 1982 ).

Since the late 19th century, many rice studies have tried to answer the roles of social scientists in agricultural research. Social sciences have contributed to agricultural research in many ways, especially regarding technology adoption by farmers (DeWalt, 1985 ; Doorman, 1990 ). Doorman ( 1991 , p. 4) synthesized these studies and offered seven roles for sociologists and anthropologists in agricultural research as follows:

“Accommodator of new technology, ex-post and ex-ante evaluator of the impact of new technology, an indicator of the needs for new technology, translator of farmer’s perceptions, broker-sensitizer, adviser in on-farm research, and trainer of team members from other disciplines.”

Social studies of rice are especially critical in Indonesia and the Philippines—home to hundreds of Indigenous cultural communities and Indigenous peoples (Asian Development Bank, 2002 ; UNDP Philippines, 2010 ). Regardless of the highly contested debates surrounding “indigeneity” or “being indigenous,” especially in Indonesia (Hadiprayitno, 2017 ), we argue that Indigenous cultural communities and Indigenous peoples have similarities (i.e., they are often farming or agrarian societies) but also recognize their differences and diversity in terms of their farming practices, beliefs, traditions, and rituals. These socio-cultural factors and human and non-human interactions influence rice production; thus, these differences and diversity bring front-and-center the importance of needs-based, community-driven, and context-sensitive interventions or projects for rice farming communities. These are research areas best explored by sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural scholars.

Today, agriculture’s sociological, anthropological, and cultural research have gone beyond the classic technology adoption arena. In Indonesia, studies have explored farmers’ technical efficiency in rice production (e.g., Muhardi and Effendy, 2021 ), the similarities and differences of labor regimes among them (e.g., White and Wijaya, 2021 ), the role of social capital (e.g., Salman et al., 2021 ), and the reciprocal human–environmental interactions in the rice ecological system (e.g., Sanjatmiko, 2021 ). Disyacitta Nariswari and Lauder ( 2021 ) conducted a dialectological study to examine the various Sundanese, Javanese, and Betawi Malay words used in rice production. Rochman et al. ( 2021 ) looked into the ngahuma (planting rice in the fields) as one of the inviolable customary laws of the Baduy Indigenous cultural community in Banten, Indonesia.

In the Philippines, Balogbog and Gomez ( 2020 ) identified upland rice farmers’ productivity and technical efficiency in Sarangani. Aguilar et al. ( 2021 ) examined the drivers of change, resilience, and potential trajectories of traditional rice-based agroecosystems in Kiangan, Ifugao. Pasiona et al. ( 2021 ) found that using the “modified listening group method” enables farmers’ peer-to-peer learning of technical concepts. Sociologist Shunnan Chiang ( 2020 ) examined the driving forces behind the transformation of the status of brown rice in the country.

Social scientists could further look into the social, cultural, technological, and human–ecological interactions in the temporal and spatial studies of different rice farming regions in Indonesia and the Philippines. Other topics could include the cultural practices and the techno-social relationships of rice farmers (e.g., Shepherd and McWilliam, 2011 ) and other players in the rice value chain, local and indigenous knowledge and practices on agrobiodiversity conservation, historical and invasive pests and diseases, agricultural health and safety, farmer education, and aging agricultural infrastructures. Lastly, future researchers can explore the impacts of adopting rice farming technologies in the different stages or processes of the rice value chain. They can look into its short- and longer-term effects on farmers’ livelihoods and conduct comparative analyses on how it improves, or not, their livelihoods, and whether farmers regard them better compared to the traditional and indigenous practices and beliefs that their communities apply and observe in rice farming.

Social and environmental psychology

Our review yielded no article published on the social and environmental psychology aspects of rice farming in Indonesia and the Philippines, suggesting a new research frontier. The increasing demand for and competition over agricultural and natural resources due to climate change and population expansion (Foley et al., 2011 ) opens up new and emerging sociopsychological dilemmas for society to understand, answer, and, hopefully, solve. Social and environmental psychologists can help shed light on these questions, such as those related to understanding farmers’ pro-environmental agricultural practices (Price and Leviston, 2014 ), sustainable sharing and management of agricultural and natural resources (Anderies et al., 2013 ; Biel and Gärling, 1995 ), and understanding the psychosocial consequences of resource scarcity (Griskevicius et al., 2013 ). Broadly, social psychology examines human feelings, thoughts, and behaviors and how they are influenced by the actual, imagined, and implied presence, such as the effects of internalized social norms (Allport, 1985 ). Social psychologists look at the many facets of personality and social interactions and explore the impacts of interpersonal and group relationships on human behavior (American Psychological Association, 2014b ). On the other hand, environmental psychology examines psychological processes in human encounters with their natural and built environments (Stern, 2000 ). Environmental psychologists are interested in studying and understanding people’s responses to natural and technological hazards, conservation, and perceptions of the environment (American Psychological Association, 2014a ).

Using the Asian Journal of Social Psychology and the Journal of Environmental Psychology as benchmarks, we recommend that scholars explore the following uncharted or least studied areas of rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines: sociopsychological processes such as attitude and behavior, social cognition, self and identity, individual differences, emotions, human–environmental health and well-being, social influence, communication, interpersonal behavior, intergroup relations, group processes, and cultural processes. Researchers could also investigate the psycho-behavioral areas of nature–people interactions, theories of place, place attachment, and place identity, especially in rice farming. Other topics may include farmers’ perceptions, behaviors, and management of environmental risks and hazards; theories of pro-environmental behaviors; psychology of sustainable agriculture; and the psychological aspects of resource/land management and land-use change.

Climate change, weather extremes, and disaster risk reduction

Indonesia’s and Philippines’ equatorial and archipelagic location in the Pacific Ring of Fire (Bankoff, 2016 ; Parwanto and Oyama, 2014 ), coupled with their political, social, and economic complexities (Bankoff, 2003 , 2007 ; UNDRR and CRED, 2020 ), expose and render these countries highly vulnerable to hazards, such as typhoons, strong winds, tsunamis, storm surges, floods, droughts, and earthquakes. The accelerating global climate change increases the frequency and intensity of some of these hazards, such as prolonged droughts, torrential rainfalls causing floods, and super typhoons (IPCC, 2014 ). For example, torrential flooding, induced by heavy rains caused by low pressures and southwest monsoons, has been damaging lives and livelihoods, including rice production (Statista, 2021 ). The 2020 droughts caused over 12 trillion pesos (~US$239.40 billion) of economic losses in the Philippines (Statista, 2021 ) and affected millions of Indonesians (UNDRR, 2020 ). Prolonged drought in Indonesia has also exacerbated fire hazards, which caused transboundary haze pollution in neighboring countries, like Singapore and the Philippines, inflecting environmental health damages (Aiken, 2004 ; Sheldon and Sankaran, 2017 ; Tan-Soo and Pattanayak, 2019 ). Increasing sea-level rise due to anthropogenic climate change puts cities like Jakarta and Manila at risk of sinking in the next 30–50 years (Kulp and Strauss, 2019 ). The high vulnerability, frequent exposure, and low capacities of marginalized and poor Indonesians and Filipinos turn these hazards into disasters (Gaillard, 2010 ; Kelman, 2020 ; Kelman et al., 2015 ), negatively affecting rice agriculture.

Given these contexts, climate change, weather extremes, and disaster risks, vis-à-vis its impacts on the rice sector, are issues of profound interest to scholars and the Indonesian and Philippine governments. In the Philippines, climate adaptation studies include re-engineering rice drying systems for climate change (Orge et al., 2020 ) and evaluating climate-smart farming practices and the effectiveness of Climate-Resiliency Field Schools in Mindanao (Chandra et al., 2017 ). In Indonesia, where some rice farming communities are vulnerable to sea-level rise, scholars are experimenting to identify rice cultivars with high yields under different salinity levels (Sembiring et al., 2020 ). Hohl et al. ( 2021 ) used a regional climate model to develop index-based drought insurance products to help the Central Java government make drought-related insurance payments to rice farmers. Aprizal et al. ( 2021 ) utilized land-use conditions and rain variability data to develop a flood inundation area model for the Way Sekampung sub-watershed in Lampung, Sumatra. Others also looked at the science behind liquefaction hazards caused by irrigation systems for wet rice cultivation in mountainous farming communities like the 2018 earthquake-triggered landslides in Palu Valley, Sulawesi (Bradley et al., 2019 ).

Examples of climate mitigation-related studies in the Philippines include investigating the social innovation strategies in engaging rice farmers in bioenergy development (Minas et al., 2020 ) and evaluating the environmental performance and energy efficiency of rice straw-generated electricity sources (Reaño et al., 2021 ). Doliente and Samsatli ( 2021 ) argue that it is possible to combine energy and food production to increase farm productivity and reduce GHG emissions with minimal land expansion. Other studies have looked into the potential of alternate wetting and drying irrigation practices to mitigate emissions from rice fields (Sander et al., 2020 ).

Future work could explore the following topic areas: demand-driven research and capacity building on climate information and environmental monitoring; nature-based solutions for climate mitigation and adaptation; water–energy–food nexus in rice farming; the nexus of climate change and conflict in rice farming communities; the potentials and pitfalls of social capital in farmer’s everyday adaptation; just energy transitions in rice farming; vulnerabilities from and traditional/local/indigenous ways of adapting to climate change, including the various learning strategies communities use for its preservation; and examples, potentials, and barriers in adopting climate-smart agriculture technologies and practices.

Demographic transitions and aging farmers

Farmers are in various stages and speeds of aging globally (Rigg et al., 2020 ). Evidence of aging farmers in the Global North has been reported in Australia (O’Callaghan and Warburton, 2017 ; Rogers et al., 2013 ), the Czech Republic (Zagata et al., 2015 ), England (Hamilton et al., 2015 ), Japan (Poungchompu et al., 2012 ; Usman et al., 2021 ), and the United States of America (Mitchell et al., 2008 ; Reed, 2008 ; Yudelman and Kealy, 2000 ). Similarly, in the Global South, HelpAge International ( 2014 , p. 21) reported that “there has been a universal trend of an increase in the proportion of older people… attached to agricultural holdings… across [Low and Middle-income Countries in] Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.” Moreover, farming populations are aging rapidly in East and Southeast Asia (Rigg et al., 2020 ) and southern Africa (HelpAge, 2014 ). Despite this, the literature on aging farmers in Southeast Asian countries remains scant, except for case studies conducted in some villages and provinces in Thailand (Poungchompu et al., 2012 ; Rigg et al., 2018 , 2020 ) and the Philippines (Moya et al., 2015 ; Palis, 2020 ).

Rice farmers’ quiet but critical demographic transformation in Indonesia and the Philippines has not received much attention from scientists, policymakers, and development practitioners. The impacts of aging farmers on the micro-, meso-, and macro-level agricultural processes and outcomes are important issues that require urgent attention. Studies done in other countries could guide future work to explore these questions in Indonesia and the Philippines. These include aging’s potential negative implications in terms of agricultural efficiency and productivity (e.g., Tram and McPherson ( 2016 ) in Vietnam, and Szabo et al. ( 2021 ) in Thailand), food security (e.g., Bhandari and Mishra ( 2018 ) in Asia), farming continuity and sustainability (e.g., O’Callaghan and Warburton ( 2017 ) in Australia, Palis ( 2020 ) in the Philippines, and Rigg et al. ( 2018 , 2020 ) in Thailand), aging and feminization of farm labor (e.g., Liu et al. ( 2019 ) in China), cleaner production behaviors (e.g., Liu et al. ( 2021 ) in Northern China), youth barriers to farm entry (e.g., Zagata and Sutherland ( 2015 ) in Europe), and health and well-being of aging farmers (Jacka, 2018 ; Rogers et al., 2013 ; Ye et al., 2017 ).

Other critical new topics include the (dis)engagement and re-engagement of young people in rice farming; gender dynamics—including structures and systems of inclusion and/or exclusion—in rice production; the impacts of migration and return migration to farming households; community-based and policy-oriented case studies that provide examples of successfully engaging and retaining youth workers in farming; and social protection measures for aging farmers, to name a few.

Contemporary and emerging challenges

One of the biggest and most visible contemporary global challenges is the Covid-19 pandemic. Most pronounced is the pandemic’s impacts on the healthcare system and the economic toll it caused on the lives and livelihoods of people, including rice farmers. Only 0.18% (4 articles) of our dataset have investigated the impacts of Covid-19 on rice systems in Indonesia and the Philippines. Ling et al. ( 2021 ) assessed the effects of the pandemic on the domestic rice supply vis-à-vis food security among ASEAN member-states. They found that Singapore and Malaysia were highly vulnerable to a pandemic-induced rice crisis, while Brunei, Indonesia, and the Philippines are moderately vulnerable. They argued that Southeast Asian rice importers should consider alternative import strategies to reduce their high-risk reliance on rice supply from Thailand and Vietnam and look for other suppliers in other continents.

Rice prices did not change in the early months of the pandemic in Indonesia (Nasir et al., 2021 ); however, as the health emergency progressed, distributors and wholesalers incurred additional costs due to pandemic-induced mobility restrictions (Erlina and Elbaar, 2021 ). In the Philippines, San Juan ( 2021 ) argues that the global rice supply disruption due to the pandemic proves that the country cannot heavily rely on rice imports; instead, it should work on strengthening its domestic rice supply. To realize this, he recommended drastic investments in agriculture and research, rural solar electrification, and the promotion of research on increasing rice yields, boosting productivity, and planting sustainably as feasible steps on the road to rice self-sufficiency.

The ways and extent to which the pandemic negatively affected or exacerbated the vulnerabilities of rice farmers and other value chain actors remain an understudied area in the social studies of rice. Scholars could study the pandemic’s impacts in conjunction with other contemporary and emerging challenges like climate change, weather extremes, aging, conflict, and poverty. Scholars could also explore the medium- and longer-term impacts of the pandemic on rice production, unemployment risks, rice supply and nutrition security of farming households, and the potential and extent to which economic stimulus can benefit rice farmers, to name a few. Most importantly, the pandemic allows researchers and governments to assess the business-as-usual approach that resulted in the disastrous impacts of the pandemic on different sectors, including rice farmers, and hopefully devise strategies to learn from these experiences.

From our review of 2243 articles, cumulatively written by 6893 authors using almost 80,000 references, we conclude that a voluminous amount of rice research has been conducted in Indonesia and the Philippines since 2001. As in other reviews, (e.g., on energy research by Sovacool, 2014 ), our results show that women scholars remain underrepresented in rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines. While interdisciplinary collaboration is abundant, most of these studies belong to the natural sciences with minimal contributions from the social sciences, arts, and humanities. University and research institutions contributed the most to rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines: from hybrid rice cultivars, water management, and technology adoption to socio-cultural, political, economic, and policy issues. Influential scholars in the field were affiliated with the IRRI, which can be expected given the institute’s focus on rice, and key agriculture-focused universities and government bureaus such as the University of the Philippines and the PhilRice in the Philippines, and the Institut Pertanian Bogor University and the Universitas Gadja Maja in Indonesia. We also discussed some examples of economic, political, and policy studies; social, anthropological, and cultural research; social and environmental psychology; climate change, weather extremes, and disaster risk reduction; demographic transitions; and contemporary and emerging issues and studies on rice in the two Southeast Asian countries. Ultimately, we hope that this systematic review can help illuminate key topic areas of rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines and magnify the crucial contributions from and possible research areas and questions that interdisciplinary and comparative social scientists can further explore.

Data availability

The dataset analyzed in this study is available in the Figshare online repository via https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.17284814.v2 . All codes about Bibliometrix are available at https://bibliometrix.org/ .

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Acknowledgements

The work described in this paper was substantially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. HKUST 26600521). Partial funding was also made available by the HKUST Institute for Emerging Market Studies with support from EY.

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Cuaton, G.P., Delina, L.L. Two decades of rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines: A systematic review and research agenda for the social sciences. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 9 , 372 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01394-z

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Research Article

Growth and trend analysis of area, production and yield of rice: A scenario of rice security in Bangladesh

Contributed equally to this work with: Md. Abdullah Al Mamun, Sheikh Arafat Islam Nihad, Md. Abdur Rouf Sarkar

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Agricultural Statistics Division, Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, Gazipur, Bangladesh

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Plant Pathology Division, Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, Gazipur, Bangladesh

Roles Investigation, Resources, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Agricultural Economics Division, Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, Gazipur, Bangladesh

Roles Data curation, Resources

¶ ‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Roles Investigation, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Director General, Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, Gazipur, Bangladesh

• Md. Abdullah Al Mamun, 
• Sheikh Arafat Islam Nihad, 
• Md. Abdur Rouf Sarkar, 
• Md. Abdullah Aziz, 
• Md. Abdul Qayum, 
• Rokib Ahmed, 
• Niaz Md Farhat Rahman, 
• Md. Ismail Hossain, 
• Md. Shahjahan Kabir

• Published: December 10, 2021
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

Bangladesh positioned as third rice producing country in the world. In Bangladesh, regional growth and trend in rice production determinants, disparities and similarities of rice production environments are highly desirable. In this study, the secondary time series data of area, production, and yield of rice from 1969–70 to 2019–20 were used to investigate the growth and trend by periodic, regional, seasonal and total basis. Quality checking, trend fitting, and classification analysis were performed by the Durbin-Watson test, Exponential growth model, Cochrane-Orcutt iteration method and clustering method. The production contribution to the national rice production of Boro rice is increasing at 0.97% per year, where Aus and Aman season production contribution significantly decreased by 0.48% and 0.49% per year. Among the regions, Mymensingh, Rangpur, Bogura, Jashore, Rajshahi, and Chattogram contributed the most i.e., 13.9%, 9.8%, 8.6%, 8.6%, 8.2%, and 8.0%, respectively. Nationally, the area of Aus and Aman had a decreasing trend with a -3.63% and -0.16% per year, respectively. But, in the recent period (Period III) increasing trend was observed in the most regions. The Boro cultivation area is increasing with a rate of 3.57% per year during 1984–85 to 2019–20. High yielding variety adoption rate has increased over the period and in recent years it has found 72% for Aus, 73.5% for Aman, and 98.4% for Boro season. As a result, the yield of the Aus, Aman, and Boro seasons has been found increasing growth for most of the regions. We have identified different cluster regions in different seasons, indicating high dissimilarities among the rice production regions in Bangladesh. The region-wise actionable plan should be taken to rapidly adopt new varieties, management technologies and extension activities in lower contributor regions to improve productivity. Cluster-wise, policy strategies should be implemented for top and less contributor regions to ensure rice security of Bangladesh.

Citation: Al Mamun MA, Nihad SAI, Sarkar MAR, Aziz MA, Qayum MA, Ahmed R, et al. (2021) Growth and trend analysis of area, production and yield of rice: A scenario of rice security in Bangladesh. PLoS ONE 16(12): e0261128. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128

Editor: Vassilis G. Aschonitis, Soil and Water Resources Institute ELGO-DIMITRA, GREECE

Received: September 21, 2021; Accepted: November 28, 2021; Published: December 10, 2021

Copyright: © 2021 Al Mamun et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Globally rice ( Oryza sativa ) is the third major cereal grain [ 1 ] and more than half of the world population consumes its as a staple food [ 2 ]. Broad adaptive capability in different ecosystems and less cultivation risk, several farmers preferred rice cultivation instead of other crops. World population is increasing and it is assumed that 14,886 million tons (MT) of foods need to be produced in 2050 to meet up the food demand [ 3 ]. Worldwide 503.17 MT rice is produced where China produces 29.5% of the total, followed by India (23.8%), Bangladesh (7.0%), Indonesia (6.9%), Vietnam (5.4%), and Thailand (3.7%) [ 4 ].

Rice is also the staple food in Bangladesh and accounting for approximately 78 percent of the country’s total net cropped areas cultivation. The country achieves an autarky to meet up the rice demand for its 169.04 million peoples from 11.55 million hectares of cultivated gross area [ 5 , 6 ]. In Bangladesh, food security is equivalent to rice security [ 5 ]. Rice is cultivated in three seasons namely Aus, Aman and Boro throughout the year. Since independence, rice production has been increased three-fold from approximately 11 MT in 1971–72 to about 36.6 MT in 2019–20 [ 7 ]. This revolution has transformed the country from so called “Bottomless Basket” to a “Full of Food Basket”. After a long period, rice production in Bangladesh has risen significantly after 1990–1991, especially during two periods: 1996–1997 and 2000–01, as well as from 2009–10 to 2013–14. Improved loan distribution policies (credit deposits directly to farmers’ 10 Taka bank accounts), well-organized fertilizer supplies, availability of high-quality seeds by the public and commercial sectors, and technical interventions (e.g. genetic improvements of varieties for favorable and unfavorable ecosystems) make it possible to make Bangladesh as one of the largest contributors of rice in the world [ 5 , 8 ]. Bangladesh recently placed the third position worldwide in rice production, behind China and India, with a production volume of 3.6 crore tonnes [ 1 ].

In reality, the global food production has increased sharply since the Borlaug and Jennings days, keeping pace with an increasingly higher rate of population growth. To cite a country-specific example, we can easily refer to the Bangladesh scenario. Over the past four decades, Bangladesh succeeded in outpacing the population growth rate (1.3%) with its growth in rice output (2.8%) [ 7 ]. To increase or sustain the rice production, it is very important to interpose the rice-based technology in a specific ecosystems or specific locations. Knowledge about region specific rice cultivation scenario will be helpful to disseminate newly release technologies and to take necessary policy for sustainable rice production in Bangladesh. Therefore, this study investigates the growth and trend of area, production and yield of rice in Bangladesh based on periodic, regional, seasonal and total basis.

Materials and methods

Bangladesh is located in the northeastern part of South Asia. The majestic Himalayas stand some distance to the north, where the Bay of Bengal is in the south. These picturesque geographical boundaries frame a low-lying plain of about 1,47,570 square kilometers, criss-crossed by innumerable rivers and streams. The geographical extent of the country is between latitudes 20°34’ and 26°38’, and longitudes 88°01’ and 92°41’. The country’s borders are as follows: in the west, India (West Bengal); in the east, India (Tripura and Assam); in the south, Myanmar; and in the north, India (West Bengal and Meghalaya) [ 9 ]. Fig 1 depicts a conceptual framework of the study.

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Shapefile republished from Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) database ( http://maps.barcapps.gov.bd/index.php ) under a CC BY license, with permission from Computer and GIS unit, BARC, original copyright 2014.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.g001

Seasonal and total rice area, production and yield data were used from 1969–72 to 2019–20 at the national level (aggregate) and 1984–85 to 2019–20 at the regional level (disaggregate).

This study is designed based on secondary sources data published by the different issues of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS). For the analysis, region-wise time-series data were divided into three periods, Period I (1984–85 to 1995–96); Period II (1996–97 to 2007–08), and Period III (2008–09 to 2019–20). The regional variations were analyzed by considering an unchanging regional base of homogeneous environments. Region-wise scenarios would provide a base to explain the effects of specific conditions as well as agricultural development. In the published issues of the Year Book of Agricultural Statistics, district-wise rice data is available after 2006–07 [ 10 ]. Earlier area, production, and yield of rice data were published according to 23 crop production regions representing the 30 agro-ecological zones (AEZ) of Bangladesh. In this study, we aggregated all data into 14 agricultural regions because the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) conduct their activities according to these regions representing 64 districts of Bangladesh. The distribution of the studied regions is presented in Fig 1 .

Geographic Information System (GIS) map was used to describe the regional variations of area, production, yield and total rice in Bangladesh. However, administrative shape file of Bangladesh was downloaded and used from website of the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council. The specific link of the shape file (“Administrative map”) is: http://maps.barcapps.gov.bd/index.php .

The autocorrelation detection, regression model for growth estimations, and cluster analysis techniques were used in this study. In time series regression data, there are numerous causes of auto-correlation. Autocorrelation is often caused by the analyst’s inability to incorporate one or more key predictor variables in the model. The existence of autocorrelation in the errors affects the ordinary least-squares regression method in many ways [ 11 ]. Although regression coefficients are still unbiased, they are no longer considered minimum-variance estimates. When errors are positively autocorrelated, the residual mean square may underestimate the error variance significantly. Autocorrelation may be detected using various statistical techniques. Durbin and Watson [ 12 ] developed a procedure that is frequently utilized worldwide. This test assumes that the errors in the regression model are produced by a first-order autoregressive process observed at evenly spaced time intervals [ 11 ]. A significant Durbin-Watson statistic or a suspicious residual plot suggests that autocorrelated model errors may be present. Table 1 represent the value of Durbin-Watson statistics and found that the data have positive autocorrelation. It may be due to a real-time dependency in error or an ’artificial’ time dependence induced by the absence of one or more key predictor variables.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.t001

Y t = Expected value at t

t = Time index

β 0 = Model intercept

β 1 = Regression coefficient

e = Residual

Y t = Area, production, and yield of rice in year t

a = Model intercept

b = Annual rate of change of rice area, production, and yield

The cluster analysis is then used to find geographical groupings of rice-producing areas with comparable features in terms of production growth and adoption of high-yielding varieties. The variables used in the cluster analysis is independent. Thus, the cluster analysis uses the distinct principal components proposed by Huth and Pokorná [ 15 ]. Applying the most commonly used non-hierarchical clustering technique, K-means clustering [ 16 , 17 ] that classify the 14 agricultural regions into K clusters using Euclidean distance as the linkage method. For all of the analyses, we used Microsoft Excel, ArcGIS 10.3, and R programming tools.

Historical (1969–70 to 2019–20) rice area coverage and production contribution by seasons

The area coverage and production contribution of Aus, Aman and Boro rice have been shown in Fig 2 . We found that historically the area coverage of Boro rice has increased significantly whereas the area of Aus and Aman season significantly decreased from 1969–70 to 2019–20. On the other hand, the production contribution of the Boro rice has increased from 16.1% to 53.7% and the increasing rate is 0.97% per year. Aus season production contribution has significantly decreased from 25.1% in 1969–70 to 7.5% in 2019–20 and the decreased rate was 0.48% per year. Production contribution of the Aman season has been significantly decreased 58.8% to 38.8% with a decreasing rate of 0.49% per year. Among the rice season, Aus production contribution is drastically reduced compared to the Aman season.

National area coverage (a) and production contribution (b) of Aus, Aman and Boro rice during 1969–70 to 2019–20.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.g002

Region-wise area and production of rice cultivation in Bangladesh

Thirty-six years (1984–85 to 2019–20) region-wise area and production of rice cultivation in Bangladesh is depicted in Fig 3 . Periodic production contributions follow an increasing trend in Dinajpur, Mymensingh, Rajshahi and Rangamati where a periodic decreasing trend was observed in Chattogram and Cumilla regions ( Fig 3A ). In the recent period, the production contribution of Dhaka, Bogura, Jashore and Faridpur is decreased compared to the earlier period. Based on historical production trend, Mymensingh, Rangpur, Bogura, Jashore, Rajshahi and Chattogram significantly contributed 13.9%, 9.8%, 8.6%, 8.6%, 8.2% and 8.0%, respectively of the total production, and they were positioned as the most rice contributed regions compared to others. On the other hand, Khulna (4.4%) and Faridpur (3.7%) contributed less compared to other regions and Rangamati was the lowest production contributor (0.7%) among all regions. However, the rice cultivation area of Mymensingh has been found as higher compared to other regions where Rangamati had the lowest rice cultivation area in Bangladesh ( Fig 3B ).

Periodic production contribution of major rice-growing regions (a), and regional production contribution and area coverage of rice (b) during 1984–85 to 2019–20. Period I: 1984–85 to 1995–96, Period II: 1996–97 to 2007–08, Period III: 2008–09 to 2019–20.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.g003

Regional trend and growth analysis of rice

Spatial and temporal (periodic) variability has been found in the rice cultivation area of Bangladesh ( Fig 4 ). Over the period, regional variation prevails in terms of rice cultivation area ( Fig 5 and Table 2 ). A continuous decreasing trend was observed in Aus cultivated area and an increasing trend was found in all regions for Boro season. The highest area decreasing rate (-18.43%) was found in Rangpur throughout the period in Aus season but in the recent period, the area is increasing at the rate of 29.62%. However, the Aman rice area fluctuated slightly in all regions, but Dhaka, Faridpur, Khulna and Sylhet regions showed a significantly decreasing trend (-0.43 to -1.54%). Overall Bangladesh, the Aus and Aman area decreased by -3.63% and -0.16% per year, respectively and the Boro area is increasing with an annual rate of 3.57% during 1984–85 to 2019–20. In Period I and Period II, cultivated areas were decreased in most of the regions for the Aus and Aman season, but in the recent period (Period III), i.e., an increasing trend was observed in most of the regions. In total, the highest growth rate of rice area was found in Rangamati (2.03%) and the lowest was observed in Faridpur (-1.25%).

Spatial (regional) and temporal (periodic) distribution of Aus (a), Aman (b), Boro (c) and total (d) rice cultivation area of Bangladesh. Period I: 1984–85 to 1995–96, Period II: 1996–97 to 2007–08, Period III: 2008–09 to 2019–20. Shapefile republished from Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) database ( http://maps.barcapps.gov.bd/index.php ) under a CC BY license, with permission from Computer and GIS unit, BARC, original copyright 2014.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.g004

Trend of Aus (a), Aman (b), Boro (c) and total (d) rice cultivation area in Bangladesh.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.g005

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.t002

Spatial and temporal (periodic) variability of rice production were observed in Bangladesh ( Fig 6 ). Rice production trends of Aus, Aman, Boro and total are presented in Fig 7 and Table 3 . The long-term production trend was found significantly increasing (2.18% to 10.25%) in all regions for the Boro season. In Aman season, production trends of all regions except Cumilla (-0.06%) were significantly increased (0.95% to 3.61%) over the period. Significant decreasing production trend (-15.33% to -4.05%) was found in most of the region for the Aus season but Barishal (2.39%), Rajshahi (3.49%) and Sylhet (1.07%) showed a significant increasing trend. In Aus, Aman and Boro season, the highest production growth rate was found in Rajshahi (3.49%), Rangamati (3.61%) and Dinajpur (10.25%), respectively. In total, the highest production growth rate was found in Dinajpur (4.07%) and the lowest was observed in Chattogram (1.64%).

Spatial (regional) and temporal (periodic) distribution of Aus (a), Aman (b), Boro (c) and total (d) rice production (metric ton) of Bangladesh. Period I: 1984–85 to 1995–96, Period II: 1996–97 to 2007–08, Period III: 2008–09 to 2019–20. Shapefile republished from Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) database ( http://maps.barcapps.gov.bd/index.php ) under a CC BY license, with permission from Computer and GIS unit, BARC, original copyright 2014.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.g006

Trend of Aus (a), Aman (b), Boro (c) and total (d) rice production in Bangladesh.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.g007

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.t003

Spatial and temporal (periodic) variability of rice yield were observed in Bangladesh ( Fig 8 ). The yield trend was found increasing for all the regions and seasons of Bangladesh but region to region yield variations was very high ( Fig 9 and Table 4 ). In most of the region, a significant increasing growth rate was found for Aus, Aman, Boro and total rice yield. In Aus, the highest annual growth rate of yield was found in Rajshahi (3.86%) and the lowest was in Rangamati (0.89%). In Aman, the highest growth rate of yield was observed in Faridpur (2.95%) and the lowest was in Rangamati (1.21%). In Boro, the highest growth rate of yield was found in Sylhet (2.78%) and the lowest was observed in Bogura (1.30%). In total, the highest growth rate of yield was found in Faridpur (4.09%) and the lowest was observed in Rangamati (1.38%).

Spatial (regional) and temporal (periodic) distribution of Aus (a), Aman (b), Boro (c) and total (d) rice yield (metric ton) of Bangladesh. Period I: 1984–85 to 1995–96, Period II: 1996–97 to 2007–08, Period III: 2008–09 to 2019–20. Shapefile republished from Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) database ( http://maps.barcapps.gov.bd/index.php ) under a CC BY license, with permission from Computer and GIS unit, BARC, original copyright 2014.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.g008

Trend of Aus (a), Aman (b), Boro (c) and total (d) rice yield in Bangladesh.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.g009

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.t004

Modern variety adoption

Periodic modern varieties adoption (%) in different regions are illustrated in Fig 10 . In Aus season, high yielding varieties (HYVs) adoption was very low in Periods I and II, but in recent years adoption is much higher than earlier and it is gradually increasing. For the Aman season, the HYVs adoption percentage is gradually increased in all regions, while the lowest adoption was found in Barishal and Faridpur regions. HYVs adoption in Boro season has found always been higher than Aus and Aman. Though adoption is higher in Boro season from the earlier periods, it is still gradually increasing and it reaches almost 100% in most of the areas. However, the adoption rate was comparatively low in Sylhet region during Boro season. Over the period, the modern variety adoption percentage gradually increasing in all over Bangladesh. The countrywide average modern variety adoption (%) in different seasons are shown in Fig 11 . In recent period, the adoption percentage of Aus rice reached 72% from 21.4%. In Period I, the HYV adoption percentage for Aman season was 34.15% and it increased by 73.5% in Period III. Similarly, for Boro season adoption is gradually increasing and it reaches 88.6% to 98.4% from Period I to Period III.

Periodic and regional high yielding varieties adoption (%) of Aus (a), Aman (b), Boro (c) and total (d) rice season in Bangladesh. Period I: 1984–85 to 1995–96, Period II: 1996–97 to 2007–08, Period III: 2008–09 to 2019–20.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.g010

Period I: 1984–85 to 1995–96, Period II: 1996–97 to 2007–08, Period III: 2008–09 to 2019–20.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.g011

Cluster analysis for identifying the dynamics of rice varietal adoption and production growth

The cluster analysis is used to identify groups of identical rice production regions depicting similar characteristics in their modern variety adoption and production growth rate ( Fig 12 ). From the analysis, different classes of cluster have been identified to classify the regions exhibiting significant rising trends, significant decreasing trends and mixed or insignificant trends in the rice production and high yielding adoption growth rates. Fig 12 is prepared by using K-means clustering to reflect the aforesaid distinct characteristics. In Aus season, HYV variety adoption growth rate is positive for all the regions except Rangamati. But in Mymensingh, Bogura, Dinajpur, Rangpur, Dhaka and Faridpur have negative production growth rate and formed the same cluster. For Aman season, we have identified four clusters where Dinajpur, Rajshahi, Sylhet, Barishal formed a similar cluster. Another cluster contains Jashore, Mymensingh, Bogura, Rangpur and Cumilla regions and, Rangamati and Chattogram formed a similar cluster. In the case of Boro season, Chattogram, Rangamati, Bogura, Mymensingh, Faridpur, Dhaka and Mymensingh are in the same cluster environment whereas Rajshahi, Jashore, Rangpur and Barishal are in the same cluster. The other cluster was found in Khulna and Dinajpur regions, whereas Sylhet formed a single separate cluster ( Fig 12 ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.g012

Growth and trend analysis are necessary to demonstrate the rice scenario by season, area, yield, production and varietal adaptability. Rice production depends on the season, variety, environment and geographical segmentation. Rice is cultivated in three seasons in Bangladesh namely Aus, Aman and Boro. This study revealed that the production contribution of Boro season is much higher compared to other seasons since 1998–99. Whereas production contribution of Aman season was higher from 1969–70 to 1997–98. Boro season is less vulnerable to rice disease, pests and other natural calamities and government incentives on Boro cultivation more specifically on irrigation facilities increase the Boro cultivation area [ 6 , 18 ]. Moreover, after the release of two Boro mega varieties, BRRI dhan28 and BRRI dhan29 in 1994, the second silent green revolution of rice has occurred in Bangladesh. More than 60% of the area is covered by these two varieties during Boro season [ 19 ]. Currently, Boro cultivation area recorded for 61% of total cropped area in the Rabi season, which contributes 55% of total rice production in the country [ 18 ]. Our findings are also similar to this results. The maximum growing degree days, long vegetative growth, sunny weather and high amount of fertilizer utilization capacity favors the potential yield of rice during Boro season [ 18 ]. Moreover, the price of Boro rice is higher compared to other seasons which is also a key regulator of the intend of farmers to cultivate Boro rice [ 20 ]. Boro-Fallow-Fallow is the second dominant cropping pattern (13% of total net cropped area) of Bangladesh [ 6 , 21 ] and this pattern profoundly found in Haor areas where other season rice cultivation is not possible except Boro due to stagnant water [ 22 , 23 ]. Haor area is a major contributor (18%) of rice production in Boro season [ 24 ] and it might be another cause of yield differentiation from other seasons. However, cold stress at seedling stage in north-west and reproductive stage in north-east (haor) regions, heat wave during flowering stage, biotic stresses mainly blast and brown plant hopper, and flash flood are becoming major challenges for Boro rice cultivation [ 25 ]. To overcome these challenges, adoption of biotic and abiotic stress tolerant varieties, precision management and irrigation infrastructure are the key production risk management strategies.

Rainfed Aman rice yield has been found as static compared to other seasons during the study period. Therefore, to ensure the future food demand of overgrowing populations, we have to sustain or increase the Aman rice production in Bangladesh. Though the rice cultivation area of Aman is higher than Aus and Boro, the yield capacity of Aman varieties is lower than the Boro varieties [ 5 ]. Climatic conditions i.e., cloudy weather, low uptake capacity of fertilizer, lowest growing degree days and short life duration are the main causes of low rice yield of Aman season. Delay planting due to anomalous rainfall, early flood, drought and other climatic hazards causes low yield of Aman rice [ 26 , 27 ] which discourage farmers to cultivate rice in Aman season. Late planting of Aman sometimes hampered the rabi crops (potato, wheat, mustard, vegetables, Boro rice etc.) cultivation. Rabi crops cultivation are more profitable and safer than Aman rice and so farmers prefer to keep the land fallow during Aman instead of rice cultivation [ 28 ]. To encourage the farmers for cultivating Aman rice, short duration HYVs i.e., BRRI dhan56, BRRI dhan57, BRRI dhan71 and BRRI dhan75 could be a potential technology. Coastal area comprises 20% of the country and it covers 30% of the net cultivation area of Bangladesh [ 29 ]. To withstand the challenge of salinity of coastal region during Aman season, farmers tend to cultivate traditional local saline tolerant rice varieties which gives poor yield [ 30 ]. Prawn culture is a profitable income source to the farmers of southern part and so they prefer to culture prawn in “Gher (closed flat area)” than the rice cultivation during Aman season [ 31 ]. Deficiency of nutrients such as N, P, Cu and Zn in saline soil are also a major drawback for low yield of rice in coastal areas. However, technological advancement and development of high yielding varieties can play a vital role for increasing Aman rice production. Farmers of the southern region tend to cultivate Aman instead of Boro due to availability of soil moisture and low salinity problem. Rainfall of Aman season diminishes the salinity which favors the rice cultivation in this season [ 32 ]. Moreover, salinity is a major problem for Boro (dry season) cultivation in the southern part of Bangladesh [ 33 ]. Heavy tide is another hinder for rice cultivation in southern-coastal regions. BRRI dhan76, BRRI dhan77 and BRRI dhan78 are modern high yielding rice varieties of Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI), bred in such a way so that their seedlings will be long to withstand the tidal wetland condition [ 34 ]. These varieties give around 5 tonnes yield per hectare which is higher than the local indigenous varieties (2.5 to 3 tonnes/ha) and these varieties shed a light on increasing rice production in the coastal areas. BR23 and BRRI dhan47 are high yielding salt tolerant varieties for Aman and Boro season, respectively which covered a significant area of southern regions. Now-a-days, the newly released HYV i.e., BRRI dhan67 is gaining popularity in saline prone areas of Bangladesh.

Aus is one of the most vulnerable rice growing seasons of Bangladesh [ 35 ]. Climatic conditions i.e., hot humid weather favors the outbreak of diseases and insect pest during Aus season. Tungro is one of the severe threats of Aus production and it can cause 100% yield loss of rice under severe outbreak condition [ 36 ]. Flash flood, drought, high temperature and low yield are also a major drawback of Aus production. Moreover, late transplanting of Boro rice is one of the reasons for Aus area reduction [ 37 ]. High yield and production as well as net return of Boro rice also dampened farmers’ interest to cultivate Aus rice. But intensive irrigated Boro rice cultivation depletes the underground water resulting irrigation water scarcity in the northern part of Bangladesh. So, shifting of Boro area to Aus cultivation is the key concern of the present time. However, adaptation of modern varieties (like BRRI dhan48), disease and pest management technologies and irrigation facilities could be a good option to withstand the challenge of the critical environment of the Aus season.

Mymensingh is the largest rice producing region while the lowest rice producing region was Rangamati in terms of area and production. This is because Mymensingh is favorable for rice cultivation and Rangamati is the hilly disadvantageous areas and less access to modern technologies. We found most of the regions have positive production growth rate for Aman and Boro season. But in Aus season, especially Mymensingh, Bogura, Dinajpur, Rangpur, Dhaka and Faridpur have negative production growth rate. This is due to most of the aforementioned regions have dominated Boro-Fallow-T. Aman cropping pattern. In addition, those regions have intensified with non-rice cash crops and thereby the required growth duration of Aus is insufficient. Noticeably, the released Aus rice varieties are not easily fit into this cropping pattern. Besides, some regions have single Boro dominated cropping patterns due to adverse agro-climatic and geographical conditions. This is why some regions have negative production growth rate. To increase the regional productivity equally, varietal and management interventions is must. Kabir et al., [ 5 ] reported that there are five unexplored areas in Bangladesh, where rice cultivation is possible. They mentioned that greater Barishal region, greater Sylhet region, South-west and greater Jashore region, Coastal charland in Barishal and Noakhali, and Chattogram hill tracts have unexplored areas. New HYVs, irrigation facilities, proper drainage system, and re-excavation of canals needs to be applied in these regions to increase the rice production.

Improved varieties and production technologies are the key drivers for enhancing rice production in Bangladesh. So far, we have developed 137 modern rice varieties and more than 300 production technologies by addressing different favorable and fragile ecosystems. Out of 36 stress tolerant varieties, BRRI dhan71 and BINA dhan19 in drought; BRRI dhan51, BRRI dhan52 and BINA dhan12 in submergence; BRRI dhan67, BRRI dhan97 and BINA dhan10 in saline, and BRRI dhan36 and BRRI dhan55 in cold ecosystems are the promising varieties for increasing production of stress prone areas in Bangladesh. Besides, BR11, BRRI dhan28, BRRI dhan29, BRRI dhan48, BRRI dhan49, BRRI dhan50, BRRI dhan58, BRRI dhan63, BRRI dhan81, BRRI dhan87, BRRI dhan89, BRRI dhan92, BRRI dhan96, BRRI dhan98, BRRI hybrid dhan3, BRRI hybrid dhan5 and BRRI hybrid dhan7 are the main players to boost up the rice production in Bangladesh. Use of water saving alternate wet and drying (AWD) techniques for irrigation, use of shallow water tubewell for irrigation from pond or river water, government subsidies for fertilizer and irrigation facilities, development of cropping pattern to relief the abject poverty of the northern part, disease and insect management technologies, and training of farmers to adopt modern rice cultivation techniques are acted as a catalyst to increase the rice production in Bangladesh.

This study examined the area, production and yield trend, and growth rates of rice from 1984–85 to 2019–20; and analytically classified the rice production regions. Trend analyses showed an increasing and decreasing growth rates for the Aus, Aman, Boro, and total rice determinants in different periods. In Aus rice, area and production growth rate had significantly decreased in all the regions, while yield was significantly increased over the period. In the Aman season, the area growth rate was decreased for seven regions, but production and yield growth rates were significantly increased for all regions. Based on area, production, and yield, Boro rice have found a significant increasing trend in all the regions. In the recent period, HYVs adaption rates were found 72% for Aus, 73.5% for Aman, and 98.4% for Boro season. During 1969–70 to 2019–20, the production contribution to the national rice production of Boro rice is significantly increasing at 0.97% per year, where Aus and Aman season production contribution significantly decreased by 0.48% and 0.49% per year, respectively. Aggregated in last 36 years rice production, Mymensingh (13.9%), Rangpur (9.8%), Bogura (8.6%), Jashore (8.6%), and Rajshahi (8.2%) were the top five production contributor regions in national rice production of Bangladesh. We have identified different cluster regions in different seasons, indicating high dissimilarities among the rice production regions. It is recommended that steps need to be taken to increase and sustain the rice production by implementing several specialized approaches. The region-wise actionable plan should be taken to rapidly adopt new technologies and highlight the research and extensions activities for fewer contributor regions to improve productivity. Cluster-wise policy strategies should be implemented for top and less contributor regions to ensure rice security as well as food security in Bangladesh.

Supporting information

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.s001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261128.s002

Acknowledgments

Authors express their sincere thanks to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) for making available of relevant rice data and administrative GIS shape file of Bangladesh, respectively. The authors also acknowledge several scientists of the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute for participating discussion at various stages of preparing the manuscript.

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The 21st Century Agriculture: When Rice Research Draws Attention to Climate Variability and How Weedy Rice and Underutilized Grains Come in Handy

Noraikim mohd hanafiah.

1 Functional Omics and Bioprocess Development Laboratory, Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia

Muhamad Shakirin Mispan

2 The Centre for Research in Biotechnology for Agriculture, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia; ym.ude.mu@nirikahs

Phaik Eem Lim

3 Institute of Ocean and Earth Science, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia; ym.ude.mu@meekiahp

Niranjan Baisakh

4 School of Plant, Environmental, and Soil Science, Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA

Rice, the first crop to be fully sequenced and annotated in the mid-2000s, is an excellent model species for crop research due mainly to its relatively small genome and rich genetic diversity. The 130-million-year-old cereal came into the limelight in the 1960s when the semi-dwarfing gene sd-1 , better known as the “green revolution” gene, resulted in the establishment of a high-yielding semi-dwarf variety IR8. Deemed as the miracle rice, IR8 saved millions of lives and revolutionized irrigated rice farming particularly in the tropics. The technology, however, spurred some unintended negative consequences, especially in prompting ubiquitous monoculture systems that increase agricultural vulnerability to extreme weather events and climate variability. One feasible way to incorporate resilience in modern rice varieties with narrow genetic backgrounds is by introgressing alleles from the germplasm of its weedy and wild relatives, or perhaps from the suitable underutilized species that harbor novel genes responsive to various biotic and abiotic stresses. This review reminisces the fascinating half-century journey of rice research and highlights the potential utilization of weedy rice and underutilized grains in modern breeding programs. Other possible alternatives to improve the sustainability of crop production systems in a changing climate are also discussed.

1. Introduction

The blueprint to achieve a more sustainable future for all, or better known collectively as the sustainable development goals (SDGs), was developed by the United Nations in 2015 as a universal call for action to protect the earth, end poverty, and ensure that humans live in peace and prosperity [ 1 , 2 ]. Agriculture, the largest user of natural resources like water and land in the world, plays a direct role in achieving some of the 17 developed SDGs, especially in terms of water, biodiversity, climate change, poverty, sustainable energy, and cities [ 3 ]. The green revolution (GR) succeeded in increasing crop production after the mid-20th century and saved millions of lives [ 4 ]. However, a new paradigm of green agriculture, where less resources are used to grow crops, is required in the current century to feed the ever-growing population amid climate change. The Fifth Assessment Report prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2014 stated that crop yield in low-latitude countries would be consistently and negatively affected by climate change. The average global temperature increased by ~0.13 °C since the 1950s and is expected to grow at a faster pace (~0.2 °C per decade) in the next several decades [ 5 ]. The increment in maximum temperature in certain locations may affect the yield and reproduction of many important crops [ 6 ]. For instance, a one-degree increase in the maximum temperature in Nepal caused a decrease in rice production to an average of about 130 kg/ha [ 7 ]. A more coherent and systematic approach to global food production is, therefore, crucial for sustainable agriculture in the 21st century [ 8 , 9 ].

The true grass family Poaceae (or Gramineae) is long considered as the most economically important plant family for food production, comprising more than 10,000 species, which include the “big three” cereals—wheat ( Triticum aestivum ), maize ( Zea mays ), and rice ( Oryza sativa ) [ 10 ]. Rice, with over 40,000 distinct varieties grown on every continent except Antarctica [ 11 , 12 ], is the most important food crop in the developing world [ 13 , 14 ]. It is a dependable staple for more than half of the entire world’s population, including about 550 million undernourished people living in Asia [ 15 , 16 ]. The genus Oryza , which emerged almost 130 million years ago, consists of 22 wild and two cultivated species, namely O. sativa and O. glaberrima [ 17 ]. Pericarp color, dormancy, shattering, panicle architecture, and tiller number are among the primary traits used to differentiate between the wild and cultivated species [ 18 ]. The wild rice O. rufipogon , commonly known as Asian rice, is the recognized progenitor of O. sativa that contains two major subspecies: long-grain, non-sticky indica rice and short-grain, sticky japonica rice [ 19 ]. Based on a geographical analysis, indica rice was domesticated in the Himalayas, likely eastern India, while japonica rice was domesticated in southern China [ 20 ]. The African cultivated rice O. glaberrima , on the other hand, is grown in small areas in West Africa [ 21 ].

The old saying “rice is life” reflects the importance of this ancient grain to humankind not only as a staple food but also as cultural and spiritual sustenance [ 22 ]. Through the lens of science, rice is an excellent model species for plant biology research, particularly for studies on monocotyledonous plants, due to its relatively small genome size of 430 Mb [ 23 , 24 , 25 ]. It is the first crop to be fully sequenced, furnishing a valuable reservoir of genetic variation for numerous agriculturally important traits such as yield and stress tolerance [ 18 ]. Oryza species were classified into three main groups (or complexes), called the primary, secondary, and tertiary gene pools, based mainly on the ease of gene transfer into cultivated species [ 11 , 23 , 26 ]. The primary gene pool ( O. sativa complex) consists of Asian cultivated rice ( O. sativa ), weedy rice ( O. sativa f. spontanea ), wild ancestor species ( O. rufipogon and O. nivara ), and other AA-genome variant species. The O. sativa complex constitutes primarily the diploid AA-genome species (2n = 24) with perfect synapsis and relatively high sexual compatibility, and pollen and panicle fecundity of F1 hybrids [ 21 ]. The secondary gene pool ( O. officinalis complex) encompasses other non-AA-genome species, whereas the tertiary gene pool ( O. meyeriana and O. ridleyi complex) consists of species of other genera in the tribe Oryzeae [ 27 ].

The past half-century witnessed a handful of eminent scientific innovations for agricultural systems, from the development of high-yielding semi-dwarf varieties of various major crops through systematic breeding programs to more sophisticated studies of plants at the molecular level, with the latest innovation being the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) gene-editing technology [ 28 , 29 ]. In rice specifically, its first completed public genome not only contributed to significant advancements in its genetics and breeding but also paved the way for the sequencing of more complicated crop genomes such as wheat and maize [ 30 ]. Nonetheless, the fact that the global demand for rice is continually increasing while its production per capita is decreasing makes it necessary for researchers to constantly look for critical ways to further improve the crop. Although one of the notable challenges in rice production is the presence of weedy rice [ 31 ], recent studies suggested that weedy rice has novel sources of resistance to devastating rice diseases such as sheath blight (caused by Rhizoctonia solani ) and blast (caused by Magnaporthe oryzae ) that cause severe crop losses worldwide [ 32 ]. In this review, we attempted to synthesize the past research on rice biology and genetics and highlight the main gaps and future directions in rice research. We also discussed the potential utilization of weedy rice and underutilized grain crops in the development of climate-resilient rice varieties.

2. Highlights of Rice Research since the Green Revolution

The GR in the 1960s resulted in the development of IR8, the first semi-dwarf, high-yielding variety (HYV) of rice by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). The seeds of the IR8, hailed as “miracle seeds”, were credited with saving millions of lives in many famine-prone countries, particularly those in Asia such as India and China [ 33 ]. Nevertheless, its reliance on heavy doses of fertilizers and irrigation to maximize yield sparked controversy for decades [ 34 ]. As the 21st century heralds a new GR, it is essential to dwell on the past achievements and failures during the early and late GR to make sure that all critical aspects of crop improvement are thoroughly considered for the next, greener revolution.

2.1. Early Green Revolution

The discovery of the semi-dwarfing ( sd-1 ) gene by the late Norman E. Borlaug, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate who is known as the Father of GR, dramatically enhanced the development of HYV throughout the world, remarkably for the big three cereals. The semi-dwarf trait became credible in supporting the heavy grains of HYVs and preventing the plants from lodging. Between 1966 and 1986, short-statured rice varieties adopted approximately 60% of the global rice land [ 35 ]. The first HYV IR8 was derived from the cross between Dee-geo-woo-gen (DGWG), a dwarf Chinese variety with the Sd-1 gene and Peta variety from Indonesia which is tall, vigorous, and good in taste [ 33 ]. It was released in 1966, and quickly became the most planted rice variety in some areas of Asia. Although the IR8 has some remarkable traits such as lodging resistance and good fertilizer response, it also possesses several drawbacks, with the major ones being its long growth duration (i.e., matures in 130 days) and susceptibility to many diseases and insects. Thereupon, the breeding programs at IRRI focused mainly on the development of short-duration and/or multiple disease- and insect-resistant varieties, leading to the release of ~30 IR varieties by the mid-1980s [ 35 ]. In addition to having a considerably short growth cycle, newly developed modern rice varieties such as IR36, IR50, and IR64 are photoperiod-insensitive and can be planted at any time of the year [ 36 ].

The success of the IR8 was recognized globally by breeders working on rice and beyond. Semi-dwarf varieties were widely used as the donor parent in many intensive breeding programs for other major food crops such as wheat [ 37 ] and maize [ 38 ]. The modern varieties, by and large, respond better to nitrogen fertilizer compared to the traditional varieties, which usually grow excessively tall, lodge early, and produce tiller extensively with low yields [ 36 ]. However, it is important to note that the production of the modern varieties requires the utilization of a substantial amount of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, with the adoption of efficient irrigation systems to boot [ 39 , 40 ]. Another major issue of growing modern varieties is the increase in monoculture, continuous cultivation of a uniform crop variety on a particular land, which reduces the genetic diversity of crops and agricultural system, thus increasing the crop vulnerability to agricultural risks, notably disease and pest infestation [ 1 , 34 ]. Monoculture is now dominant in many countries, especially those that benefited from GR.

2.2. Late Green Revolution

The global production of wheat, maize, and rice in many parts of the world increased regularly since the 1960s, and it nearly doubled within a mere two decades that consequently reduced famine and hunger crises [ 41 ]. Between 1980 and 2000, the world population grew from 4.4 billion to 6.1 billion, with more than 90% of the growth occurring in developing countries. The agricultural areas in these countries grew from 2.85 billion ha in 1980 to 3.17 billion ha in 2001 [ 42 ]. The production of rice in the year 2000 increased by more than 200% in certain countries. Since the release of the IR8 variety in 1966, ~70% of world’s rice land was planted with HYV during the mid-1990s, and their distinctive characteristics include higher yield potential, improved grain quality, shorter growth duration, and resistance to multiple diseases and insects [ 36 ].

The late GR saw tremendous improvement in the efficient use of molecular and cellular approaches in rice research. Genetic engineering in rice began way back in the 1980s, with the first transgenic rice reported in the late 1980s [ 43 , 44 ]. Significant advancements in the genetic transformation of rice were made since then, with numerous gene transfer protocols with appropriate promoters, markers, and reporter genes being developed and employed to introgress foreign genes into rice. Standardized protocols for the production of transgenic rice of more than 60 rice varieties that include indica , japonica , javanica , and elite African cultivars are also reportedly available [ 45 ]. Much focus was given to developing rice with resistance toward insects [ 46 ], pests [ 47 ], viruses [ 48 ], and diseases such as sheath blight [ 48 ] and bacterial leaf blight [ 49 ]. One renowned example is the genetically engineered, insect-resistant Bt rice which was developed by introducing the insecticidal genes from Bacillus thuringiensis Berliner (Bt) into rice [ 50 ]. Although Bt rice showed good resistance to yellow and striped stem borer, both in laboratory and in field conditions, its commercial planting was long delayed due to regulatory restrictions for food safety concerns [ 51 ]. While the development of transgenic rice focused mainly on insect and disease resistance during the 1990s, the most remarkable success story at that time is perhaps the development of beta-carotene-producing golden rice [ 52 ], a nutritionally enhanced genetically modified crop which was only recently approved safe for human consumption in the Philippines after obtaining food safety approval from Australia, New Zealand, and the United States [ 53 , 54 ].

Rice research continued to grow and flourish as it entered the new millennium, taking its improvement far beyond the conventional practice limits. With the development of linkage and qualitative trait locus (QTL) maps, marker-assisted selection (MAS) is the most common approach used internationally. This is particularly the case for developing high-yielding rice with improved resistance against biotic and abiotic stresses, which was one of the primary goals to improve global rice production during the late era of GR [ 11 , 55 ]. Most successful examples of MAS include the development of rice introgressed with Xa genes for bacterial blight resistance and Sub1A for submergence tolerance [ 56 ]. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) represent another powerful tool used to dissect the genetics and identify markers associated with complex traits in rice, including flowering time, plant height, grain yield, and grain shape for use in MAS [ 57 , 58 ].

2.3. 21st Century

The completion of the rice genome in the mid-2000s marked a momentous milestone in rice research, opening seemingly endless doors for gene discovery not only in rice but also in other crops [ 59 , 60 ]. Rice, together with thale cress ( Arabidopsis thaliana ) that had its genome completed in 2001 [ 61 ], are the best-characterized model species in plant biology [ 23 , 62 ]. Nevertheless, rice is a C3 crop that has considerably lower photosynthetic efficiency than C4 crops such as maize and sorghum [ 63 ]. Much research was devoted to engineering C4 photosynthetic traits into rice, which could increase its yield up to 50% while using half the water. During the last decade, more than 20 comparative transcriptomic studies were published with the identification of potential C4 genes and their regulatory mechanisms [ 64 ]. This was made possible by advances in next-generation sequencing technologies, gene discovery, and, more recently, genome editing platforms [ 65 ].

At present, there are four major tools for genome editing, which include zinc finger nuclease (ZFN), transcription activator-like effector nuclease (TALEN), meganuclease, and the latest one being the CRISPR/Cas system. CRISPR/Cas system, which utilizes the adaptive mechanism of prokaryotes toward foreign deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) fragments, successfully generated mutagenesis in transgenic rice [ 66 ]. The past decade saw a noticeable increase in the application of CRISPR/Cas genome editing in plant research, especially after the successful expression of the system in two monocot (rice and sorghum, Sorghum bicolor ) and dicot (thale cress and tobacco, Nicotiana tabacum ) plants [ 67 ]. The system was utilized for multigene knockouts in plants, for example, targeted mutagenesis of paralogous cyclin-dependent kinase ( CDK ) genes in rice [ 68 ]. The study conducted by Shan et al. [ 28 ] proved that the CRISPR/Cas system was a rapid method for gene targeting in rice protoplasts (within 1–2 weeks) for generating mutated rice plants (within 13–17 weeks). Currently, the CRISPR/Cas9 system is widely used to edit genes associated with yield, quality, and disease resistance in rice. The important milestones in rice research since the GR are displayed in Figure 1 .

Milestones in rice research since green revolution.

3. Weedy Rice and Underutilized Grain Crops as Potential Complement to Existing Rice Research

The 21st century witnessed increasing attention among researchers in laying a strong foundation for a greener revolution, where improved crop varieties require less inputs, especially water and fertilizer, to feed the estimated 9.8 billion people by the mid-century [ 69 , 70 ]. Cantrell and Hettel [ 71 ] highlighted that rice research in the 21st century should emphasize how to reduce both the production and the research gaps, along with strategic research plans to develop and utilize new technologies and tools. With the constant rise in food demand and rapid changes in consumption patterns, radical research approaches are crucial to complement fundamental exploration in improving both major and underutilized (or orphan and neglected) plant species [ 72 , 73 ]. In fact, the past decade saw the emergence of multiple studies on the lesser known plants as one of the prime strategies in strengthening the four pillars of food security, which include the availability, access, utilization, and stability of food [ 1 , 74 ].

In the recent past, unique research trends were observed in many rice improvement programs globally, from uncovering the worth of the undesirable weedy rice to unearthing the potential of underutilized crops in achieving sustainable rice production. Weedy or obnoxious red rice, known as the unwanted plants of Oryza , was recently reported to possess novel sources of stress tolerance or resistance, although its presence can lead to the reduction of both the quantity and quality of the cultivated grains [ 32 ]. Evolved as an intermediate between the wild and cultivated species, weedy rice generally exhibits a high competitive ability against cultivated rice for resources and it is considered a serious threat to rice production in many major rice-producing countries [ 75 ]. Ironically, the competitive ability and adaptive evolutionary traits of weedy rice such as stress tolerance, increased seed dispersal, and dormancy [ 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 ] could be useful to maximizing resource use efficiency and yield of rice amidst the current rapid climate uncertainties. The study conducted by Ziska et al. [ 80 ] demonstrated that weedy rice responded positively to elevated temperature and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) concentration, showing height increase with greater tiller and panicle formation.

Apart from having resistance to abiotic stresses, weedy rice also displays a high degree of resistance toward certain biotic stresses, such as rice blast and sheath blight caused by Magnaporthe oryzae and Rhizoctonia solani , respectively [ 32 ]. A total of 28 QTLs associated with blast resistance were identified from two weedy rice ecotypes present in the United States, namely, black hull awned and straw hull awnless [ 81 ]. Furthermore, the tallness of weedy rice helps it to avoid damage by sheath blight disease that causes injury to rice stem, leaf, and sheath [ 32 ]. Table 1 summarizes some important genes linked to biotic and abiotic stresses in weedy rice. Exploiting the full potential of weedy rice, especially its gene pools, can be beneficial for breeding and evolutionary studies of modern rice [ 82 ]. The virtue of weedy rice is finally deliberated, and this is most likely driven by the increased knowledge and awareness on the adverse effects of climate change.

Examples of important genes linked to biotic and abiotic stresses in weedy rice.

Urbanization is one of the most dominant demographic trends, with approximately 70% of the world’s population projected to live in cities by the mid-century [ 89 ]. In urban environments, dietary habits and meal patterns can vary significantly between the rich, the middle class, and the poor communities. With varying diet regimes among the urban communities especially those in developed nations, the challenge of fulfilling consumer needs and demands becomes bigger than ever [ 90 , 91 , 92 ]. Many researchers today would agree that the development of underutilized crops that feed only certain communities is equally important as the improvement of common staple crops such as rice that feed the majority [ 72 , 93 , 94 ]. This perhaps explains why the research on underutilized crops gained momentum in the current era. Not only are these crops important in materializing a diversified food basket, but they are also valuable genetic resources for breeding programs of major crops and maintaining global biodiversity [ 34 , 95 ].

A group of long-overlooked ancient grain crops, such as teff ( Eragrostis tef ), quinoa ( Chenopodium quinoa ), and amaranth ( Amaranthus spp.) to name a few, finally received the research attention that they deserve in the last couple of years due mainly to their hardiness, versatility, and exquisite nutritional benefits [ 1 , 92 , 95 , 96 ]. These underutilized crops were a staple in their native homes for hundreds of years, and they possess some degree of tolerance to certain stresses, as shown in Table 2 [ 97 , 98 , 99 , 100 , 101 , 102 , 103 , 104 ]. An evidential example of their superior genes of nutrional importance is the development of protato (protein-rich potato) that was engineered to express the AmA1 albumin protein of Amaranthus hypochondriacus [ 105 ]. This suggests that the genetic and genomic resources of such potential underutilized crops can be exploited to improve rice cultivars through identification and transfer of desirable alleles or traits. A simplified phylogenetic relationship between the discussed grain crops is presented in Figure 2 .

Simplified phylogenetic relationship between selected crops in the Poaeeae and Amaranthaceae families modified from References [ 106 , 107 ]).

Fundamentals and important attributes of potential underutilized grains.

Sources: [ 1 , 97 , 98 , 99 , 100 , 101 , 102 , 103 , 104 ]).

4. Laying the Route to Sustainable Rice Production: What Can We Possibly Do?

The principal aim of sustainable crop production is to optimize production by sustainably managing biological processes, biodiversity, and ecosystem services, while considering the key factors, such as economic, political, social, and environmental effects [ 108 ]. In a narrower sense, sustainable rice production is achieved when production per unit area increases as a result of ecologically regenerative approaches that integrate biodiversity and soil health rather than excessive utilization of inputs such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides [ 109 ]. Figure 3 presents several strategies which can potentially contribute significantly to sustainable rice production. It is important to ensure that the strategies used will offer socio-economic benefits to producers, both large- and small-scale, and to society for all social classes.

Plausible strategies to achieve sustainable rice production.

According to Gerber [ 110 ], a sustainable agricultural system is based mainly on the prudent use of both recyclable and renewable resources. By contrast, a system that depends on finite natural resources cannot be sustained indefinitely. The use of renewable resources (such as wind, solar, and biomass energy) to grow rice is generally still limited [ 111 ]. One of the major barriers to adopting these technologies is capital and/or construction costs, which could be overcome by implementing renewable energy subsidies to rice farmers. The promotion and utilization of renewable resources in rice fields can help promote long-term environmental stewardship, especially in relation to conserving soil quality, the main factor influencing rice production [ 112 ]. Sustainable rice production can also be supported by other means such as simplified and reduced-input farming practices. A dynamic rice production system should allow producers to choose and adopt the best combinations of practices based on their local environmental conditions and production constraints, achieving high levels of output with minimal inputs. One notable example is the system of rice intensification (SRI) ( Figure 3 ), which recommends some sustainable agronomic practices such as application of compost or organic fertilizers and draining extra water in order to keep rice fields in saturated, non-flooded conditions [ 113 ].

Genetically improved grain crops accounted for an increase in yield of more than 50% in recent decades, and plant breeders must achieve similar or better results to feed the growing population [ 114 ]. Rice should continue to be improved along with those rising underutilized crops. With the many potential future effects of global warming, rice breeders need to develop a genetically diverse portfolio of improved cultivars that are well suited to a wide range of farming practices and agro-ecosystems [ 115 ]. During the last century, about three-quarters of crop genetic diversity disappeared; hence, increased support in collecting and conserving genetic resources is much needed [ 116 ]. Crop diversification is one of the crucial ways to preserve the genetic diversity. However encouraging the substitution of common crop staples with lesser known crops certainly does not happen overnight in every part of the world [ 1 ].

A suitable complement to sustainable farming is smart farming, where automated and connected agriculture are applied. Smart farming enables sophisticated field management by integrating advanced technologies, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), artificial intelligence (AI), and Internet of things (IoT) into existing farming practices [ 117 ]. The utilization of different sensors and connected devices in smart farming are tailored specifically to optimize the quality and quantity of inputs, while preserving resources, from delivering visibility into crop and soil health to predicting crop performance and detecting outbreaks of harmful pests [ 118 ]. For rice production, smart farming recently became routine in some countries (such as the United States and Japan) that can afford the high cost of technology [ 119 ]. A more cost-effective and flexible smart farming system is pivotal to attract more rice-producing countries to adopt this farm management concept in the near future. It is feasible that small- to medium-sized farming operations could begin by implementing precision farming technologies that monitor and analyze the needs of individual crops and fields. Unlike smart farming (which involves connected technologies that link to all farm operations), precision technologies focus on precise measurements using individual sensors or devices, thus offering economic flexibility that is easier to establish [ 120 ].

To encourage low- and medium-income rice producers to engage in sustainable farming practices, many of the current agricultural policies will need to be revised. New policies should eliminate any existing subsidies that drive producers to overuse resources [ 121 ]. For example, incentives that encourage the use of fertilizers need to be removed [ 122 ]. Alternatively, policymakers could provide incentives for producers to utilize natural resources wisely. It is important for policymakers to commit to engaging with and transferring knowledge to producers, in the interest of supporting the improvements in their livelihoods and in social conditions. The gap between sustainable agricultural policies and how they are perceived should be identified, and a clear approach on how to adopt these policies should be defined.

Undoubtedly, rice, being one of the world’s major crops with a small genome size, garnered plenteous attention from the scientific community [ 123 ]. Unfortunately, this crop suffered a loss in genetic diversity, especially after the GR, where monoculture farming that relies heavily on chemical inputs began to monopolize most croplands [ 124 ]. It was reported that yields in many major rice-producing countries such as China is plateauing, and the yield gap between rice fields (actual yield) and research stations (potential yield) is still an ongoing issue in many countries [ 125 ]. Closing this gap is essential and requires collaborative efforts between breeders and governments to ensure that rice production continues to increase in a sustainable manner. Major investment for rice research is needed to revitalize breeding programs and technology transfer schemes in developing countries to provide producers with improved varieties and the knowledge of appropriate technologies, as well as to enhance their skills through suitable programs, such as farmer field schools.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the University of Malaya. A.C. was supported as a Borlaug Fellow at the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center under a project from the USDA-FAS Borlaug Fellowship Program to N.B.

Author Contributions

A.C. conceptualized the review. N.B. acquired the funding. N.M.H. and A.C. wrote the paper. M.S.M., P.E.L. and N.B. read and critically revised the paper. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This manuscript was funded by the United States Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service (USDA-FAS) [Agreement No. FX18BF-10777R040].

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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