Deepwater Rice - Brian Taylor

Deepwater Rice - Ufra nematode disease

This disease was the object of a major research effort by the Project, pursued initially by Peter Cox, he was joined by the BRRI scientist Lutfur Rahman. Then, while Lutfur took a specialist MSc course at Imperial College, UK, Isobel McGeachie joined. It is not my purpose to describe their well documented research but the following photographs will illustrate the visible symptoms of this microscopic "worm".

This disease, invisble to the farmer, can be seen as pale areas in otherwise healthy fields
The whole crop could be lost - a major disaster for a farmer with only a few small fields to provide food for his whole family

Ufra is mainly a disease of more southerly areas, which flood early and dry out for the shortest time. Here at Chorniloki, near Matlab Bazaar, Lutfur Rahman studied the merits of transplanting dwr and other aspects of ufra incidence, etc
The watery nature of the site is obvious in this picture

In June, the disease symptoms in the growing dwr are seen as dead, often noticeably white, stems

characterised by twisted apices

At harvest the twisted, white, earless stems are even more obvious

and here

seen here in close up

also this

To facilitate research into this dangerously infective disease special deepwater tanks were constructed at BRRI. Note the "cages" for separate experiments.
These had a series of settling tanks for all water pumped out from the research tanks (in background).

©2000 - Brian Taylor CBiol FIBiol FRES
11, Grazingfield, Wilford, Nottingham, NG11 7FN, U.K.
Visiting Academic in the Department of Life Science, University of Nottingham

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This disease, invisble to the farmer, can be seen as pale areas in otherwise healthy fields	The whole crop could be lost - a major disaster for a farmer with only a few small fields to provide food for his whole family

Ufra is mainly a disease of more southerly areas, which flood early and dry out for the shortest time. Here at Chorniloki, near Matlab Bazaar, Lutfur Rahman studied the merits of transplanting dwr and other aspects of ufra incidence, etc	The watery nature of the site is obvious in this picture

In June, the disease symptoms in the growing dwr are seen as dead, often noticeably white, stems	characterised by twisted apices

At harvest the twisted, white, earless stems are even more obvious	and here
seen here in close up	also this

To facilitate research into this dangerously infective disease special deepwater tanks were constructed at BRRI. Note the "cages" for separate experiments.	These had a series of settling tanks for all water pumped out from the research tanks (in background).

Deepwater Rice - Ufra nematode disease