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A new Provisia line has been approved as variety PVL02.
“It will be available for limited commercial production,” said Adam Famoso, LSU AgCenter rice breeder.
Registered seed from two farms was grown in 2019. Famoso said yield results were good.
“It did even better this year compared to previous years,” he said. “It consistently had a 10% yield advantage over PVL01.”
Further development of Provisia continues. Famoso said seed from four candidate Provisia lines — all sister lines to each other — were sent to Puerto Rico in October for additional purification and increase.
He said the lines have good disease resistance, including the Pita blast resistance gene, good grain appearance and higher yield than PVL02.
2021 is the earliest any of the lines would be released if they continue to show good results, he said.
Two advanced long-grain Clearfield lines were in their final year of testing in 2019. The experimental line LA2097 is being recommend for release, and a decision will be made in the coming months.
“LA2097 has done very well over the last four years of testing, consistently outyielding CL153,” Famoso said.
In 2019 the average yield advantage was 7% across more than 20 tests throughout Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas, Famoso said.
Like CL153, LA2097 has very good blast resistance, and it has demonstrated good milling qualities. Ten acres of foundation seed was produced in 2019 and commercial seed could be available in 2021.
In most tests, Famoso said, the average yield was very good.
“On average, it outyielded CL153 by 7%,” he said.
Famoso said 2019 had some challenges, but very good results were obtained from the breeding program’s plots at the H. Rouse Caffey Rice Research Station. But the story was different for rice grown off-station.
“It was a tough year at some off-station locations,” he said. “A number of our off-station tests had some challenges, ranging from poor stands, drift, bird and hog damage, and heavy disease pressure.”
Workers harvest and thresh rice from breeding plots at the H. Rouse Caffey Rice Research Station.
Photo by Bruce Schultz.
