By Reaz Ahmad
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This season’s crop loss owing to heat stress comes as a stark reminder of what the rice scientists have long been forewarning.
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BRRI’s breeder success in developing heat-tolerant rice comes at a time when Boro farmers have suffered crop loss in different districts due to a heat shock-induced sterility in paddy plants. The April 4 nor’wester that came along with hot gusty winds damaged paddy on thousands of hectares in some central, central-east and northwest districts of the country.
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Officials both at the Ministry of Agriculture and at the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (Barc), the federating body of all public sector farm research stations in the country, consider that Bangladesh would do better if it invested more on stress-tolerant varietal development for future food security.
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