Impact of Genetic Improvements of Rice on Its Water Use and Effects of Climate Variability in Egypt

Mohamed Mehana, Mohamed Abdelrahman, Yasmin Emadeldin, Jai S. Rohila and Raghupathy Karthikeyan
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Mohamed Mehana: Agricultural Economics Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Kafrelsheikh 33717, Egypt
Mohamed Abdelrahman: Rice Research Department, Field Crops Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Kafrelsheikh 33717, Egypt
Yasmin Emadeldin: Agricultural Economics Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Kafrelsheikh 33717, Egypt
Jai S. Rohila: Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center, United States Department of Agriculture—Agricultural Research Services, Stuttgart, AR 72160, USA
Raghupathy Karthikeyan: Department of Agricultural Sciences, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634, USA

Agriculture, 2021, vol. 11, issue 9, 1-14

Abstract: Developing and disseminating resilient rice cultivars with increased productivity is a key solution to the problem of limited natural resources such as land and water. We investigated trends in rice cultivation areas and the overall production in Egypt between 2000 and 2018. This study identified rice cultivars that showed potential for high productivity when cultivated under limited irrigation. The results indicated that there were significant annual reductions in both the rice-cultivated area (−1.7% per year) and the production (−1.9% per year) during the study period. Among the commonly cultivated varieties, Sakha101 showed the highest land unit productivity, while Sakha102 showed the highest water unit productivity. The impact of deploying new cultivars was analyzed by substitution scenarios. The results showed that substituting cultivars Giza179 and Sakha107 has the potential to increase land productivity by 15.8% and 22.6%, respectively. This could result in 0.8 million m 3 in water savings compared to 2018 water consumption. Long-term impacts of climate variability on the minimum and maximum temperature, relative humidity, and average precipitation during on- and off-season for rice productivity were also analyzed using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. The results indicated that climate variability has an overall negative impact on rice productivity. Specifically, minimum temperature and on- and off-season precipitation had major long-term impacts, while higher relative humidity had a pronounced short-term impact on rice yields. The study revealed that short-duration cultivars with higher yields provided greater net savings in irrigation resources. These analyses are critical to guide the development of strategic management plans to mitigate short- and long-term climate effects on overall rice production and for developing and deploying improved rice varieties for sustainable rice production.

Keywords: ARDL; climate change; rice; sustainable production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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