Fiji has the Potential to Grow Rice Without Water
Fiji could become the model country for JUNCAO Technology in the world with the potential for rural farmers to learn to grow rice without water.
Lin Zhansen, who heads the team of Chinese workers at the Fiji-China JUNCAO Technology Demonstration Centre at Legalega in Nadi, said the potential to reach this was high.
This is considering the Centre has worked with 700 farmers throughout Fiji since the project was first brought here in 2014.
The farmers mainly grow mushroom, both for consumption and medicinal purposes and a special grass that has high nutritional contents.
The bigger potential is for Gorverment to approved the growing of rice in areas where there is no water.
Dryland rice, or up land rice, as it is sometimes referred to could be grown in rural areas as a subsistence crop and on a bigger scale could be sold.
The dryland rice cultivation has been a big hit in the Eastern Highland Province in Papua New Guinea where Mr Lin helped introduce it on a bigger scale in May of 2000. The area where the rice was planted had no rainfall for eight months and within four years of planting a total of 13 harvests were made. Mr Lin said he would be more than happy to help in planting the dryland rice but this would come after the Fijian Government and China agreed to it.
About the mushrooms
As for mushrooms, Pleurotus Ostreatuus or Oyster mushroom which are for consumption has already taken off in the western and central divisions where farmers were now making sales with the matured mushroom.
The other type of mushroom, Ganoderma Lucidum could see Fiji become a lucrative market one day, because of its medicinal contents.
Sicknesses it cures include blood pressure, high sugar and those having cholesterol problems.
Mr Lin said they now have the machines at the Legalega Centre to cut the medicinal mushroom and packet it for farmers free.
As for the nutritional grass, Mr Lin said this could also be the solution for livestock that barely have any good fodder to eat during the dry season.
“This grass grows all year round,” he said.
He said with these new technologies being introduce for agriculture, Fiji could take a leading role for JUNCAO Technology.