Seed Cleaner to be added to paddy services offered at Burma
The Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) is pushing to have a Seed Cleaner installed at its Burma Rice Research Station, according to a release on Tuesday from the Ministry of Agriculture.
The equipment which will cost the Rice Board approximately $41M, will allow for even moisture percentage in seed paddy.
Deputy General Manager of the GRDB, with direct responsibility for the Research Station, Allison Peters said that such a service is critical for good germination of seed paddy.
She added that the Seed Cleaner will be useful in mechanically removing unwanted impurities from the seed paddy before germination.
“The Cleaner remains an important part of our work at the Research Station to better our seed paddy production and productivity, as it will afford farmers’ access to better seed paddy for cultivation,” Peters said.
The release said that currently the GRDB facility at Burma produces approximately 10 percent of the seed paddy required annually by rice farmers, the majority of whom produce their own seed paddy.
According to the release, the new seed cleaner will enable more efficiency in the production of seed paddy pushing seed paddy production per crop to just about 12,000 bags which when sown would cover 12,000 acres.
Peters said that because of the quality of seed produced at Burma, each bag of seed paddy has a multiplier effect. She said that from one bag of paddy sown, a farmer can then use some of the paddy harvested from that crop as seed to sow for the next crop, with one other replication.
Currently, the GRDB Research Station has sown just over 400 acres of seed paddy.
The GRDB has given a first crop figure of land cultivated at approximately 180,000 hectares, the release added.