A study conducted by a consortium of farmers' groups in Asia has warned Filipino farmers about the disastrous results of heavy reliance on hybrid rice seeds developed largely through the efforts of foreigne plant breeders.

Released last month, the study undertaken by 11 groups from the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Papua New Guinea, Laos and Bangladesh, said the use of hybrid rice seeds placed farmers at the mercy of companies that supply the seeds for every cropping season.

Moreover, the massive introduction of hybrid rice was marked by infestation and the resurgence of diseases that led to low yields, as what happened in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia. and the Philippines.

Prof. Yuan Longpin is acknowledged as the pioneer in hybrid rice seeds and he started work on these strains as early as 1970.

The study, entitled "Feeding the Corporate Coffers: Why Hybrid Rice Continues to Fail Small Asian Rice Farmers," said "hybrids are produced by crossing two inbred — genetically fixed — varieties of a particular crop. Hybrids are special because they express what is called 'heterosis' or hybrid vigor.

The idea is that if you cross two parents which are genetically distant from each other, the offspring will be “superior,” particularly in terms of yield. However, the heterosis effect disappears after the first (F1) generation, so it is pointless for farmers to save seeds from a hybrid crop."

Chinese scientists embarked on developing hybrid rice on the basis of the success of the hybrid corn in North America and discovered a male sterile rice plant growing naturally in a field of wild rice (Oryza sativa f. spontanaea) on Hainan.

"It has a particular cytoplasm — the material surrounding the nucleus-- that induces male sterility through interaction with the nucleus. The plant was named “wild rice with abortive pollen” or WA for short. Scientistsa began crossing WA with other rice varieties to determine whether this male sterility could be passed on to subsequent generations. Those that came out male sterile, called maintainer lines, were then repeatedly back-crossed until a stable sterile plant was achieved. This plantis called a “cytoplasmic male sterile” or CMS line. CMS lines form one of the parental lines for producing hybrid seeds. The other is known as the restorer line, as it restores fertility to the CMS line when it is crossed. The seeds from this cross are the F1 hybrid seeds, which is what farmers can sow. The plants grown from F1 seeds show hybrid vigor, which theoretically translates to higher yield, although the second generation (F2) will normally not perform as well," the study added.

The study said that given this trait, farmers would be dependent on the seed companies for what they have to sow for each cropping season since these are only high-yielding for the first generation.
In short, the farmers could not, on their own, produce the seeds they need and must abide by the processes required for them to realize higher output, which means more chemical fertilizers and other agricultural inputs.

Here, the impulse for the cultivation of hybrid rice stemmed from the food crisis that swamped the globe in 2008 and led to the unveiling of the P43.7-billion FIELDS program of the Department of Agriculture (DA) in April, 2008, ostensibly to raise rice output to 19.8 million metric tons (MMT) this year from only 16.2 MMT in 2007.

The DA never realized the expansion of rice production in 2008 and the following year, and it has extended the target for 100 percent rice sufficiency to 2013, five years after the FIELDS program was unveiled.