China has developed an easy-to-grow rice variety, which scientists say will eventually relieve millions of rice growers around the world from the backbreaking labor of planting rice seedlings by hand and alleviate the country's farm-water shortages.

Chen Dazhou, director of the Rice Institute of Jiangxi Province, said the rice, nicknamed "idiot rice," will grow for several consecutive years after harvesting, eliminating the most labor-intensive job of planting seedling by hand.

The per-unit yield of one of the varieties of the rice reached 7,500 kilograms per ha, and nine of its properties met some of the country's standards for first-class quality rice.

Rice has been the most important cereal for Asia, as about half of China's 1.3 billion population and many Asian countries depend on it.

The rice has shown its capability to pass on its better properties from crossbreeding, one of the two most difficult issues to which scientists in Japan, Thailand and other countries have been striving hard to find a solution.

The other issue is the poor capacity of rice to withstand cold.

Chinese scientists have made marked progress in their search for rice genes capable of withstanding cold.

Pointing to a green rice field in Jiangxi, Chen said the rice grown in an experimental field in Nanchang, Jiangxi's capital, had survived low temperatures under zero degrees centigrade for three straight years, thanks to their decade-long research into the wild rice in Dongxiang County.

The wild rice, which was found on 0.3 hectares in a state-protected reserve, can stand cold weather of up to minus 12.8 degrees centigrade, far outstripping other varieties of rice with strong cold and aridity resistance.

Scientists had been able to achieve asexual reproduction of rice with powerful cold-resistant genes, and overcome the difficulty in retaining the advantage from crossbreeding.

The director described the rice as an unusually rare variety.

Compared with conventional rice, the new variety saves a lot of seeds, fertilizer, water and labor, cutting losses of water and soil erosion.

The new variety saves 15 to 75 tons of water per ha, an attractive point for China, a country short of water and farm labor.

Many rural families are short of hands in rice-growing seasons as many rural people have left their farmland for jobs in cities.

A total of 92 million rural people worked for at least half a year in urban areas, according to figures released by the Ministry of Agriculture.

About 20 million ha of farmland was not suitable for rice production simply due to a lack of sufficient water to grow the rice.

With huge economic, social and ecological benefits, the rice is not without shortcomings, including difficulty in pest and weed control.

(Xinhua News Agency June 28, 2003)