Paddy Field Improvement and Crop Quality Research

Youji Nitta SenseiCrop Science Laboratory

Muhammad As’ad/ 14SP231A/ Oct 27th- Nov 18th, 2014

In general, Japanese staple food is rice, but today is globalization era, it means that all kind of stuffs is moving all around the world easily. It is also affecting human’s life, especially daily behaviors. This condition is including food pattern consumption and it is resulting in the decreasing level of rice consumption by Japanese while the production is increasing, even in the smaller amount. So, this condition is causing some problems for the farmers and governments. Economically, if the demand is lower than the supply it is causing lower price for the product, but the production cost for supplier is in same level. Then this will affect into much broader aspect in human’s life, moreover the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement joint will add some pressure to the farmers directly.

In order to minimize and get some benefits from this condition, farmers, researchers and government have to work simultaneously. It will maintain the quality of the product, since Japanese are very aware with food product safety and palatability. But on the other hand, maintaining agricultural product should be followed by more efficient and effective production to make the product more competitive with other countries’ products. Since today’s economy recession is causing people to save more money for the black clouds, than used it irresponsibly.

Paddy Field Future ImprovementWestern people believe that paddy field is more harmful to the environment

than other cereals grain. It basically comes from the most common fact that paddy field is irrigated in flooded field, which described that paddy field are using more water and possessing more contamination to the water then spreading the contamination into broader ecosystem. While economically, Japan’s rice is having higher price than other rice in the world, forth its quality is in the top-class around the world. However, since the Japanese government has decided to join TPP Joint Agreement it means rice from other countries are going to join Japanese market easily with much lower price, even for the same top-varieties rice. So as this condition applied in the future, farmers will have to conduct more provident agricultural system to lower their production costs. Based in scientific and economical principal, farmers should find innovation to save their wallet from TPP Agreement liberalization.

In fact, some feasible and applicable paddy field management is already introduced but it needs to show more tangible effect for the farmers. One of the most emerging management is drip field system for paddy field. Some growth and production factors are compared between drip field, aerobic field, and flooded field and it is conducted to support its tangibility for farmers. Those factors are roots

growth level and its physiological description, plant’s length, yield amount, and plant’s stem number.

The result of the plant condition in quality and quantity analysis is very important and is shown its recent condition and adaptation to the surroundings and environment. Roots growth level is shown by its length and type of spreading, while roots physiological description is shown by its color. The results are showing that flooded condition has the longest approx. 24 meters, followed by aerobic and drip condition. Their spreading types are quietly different, flooded condition roots are spreading deeper (more than 1 meter) and widely in the same time, while aerobic condition is spreading deep, and drip condition is wider (approx. 20 cm2) and deep (almost 30 cm). Next, is the roots color, brown color is showing the plant has good nutrition from all aspects, while brighter brown color is showing that the plant has some lack of nutrition whether from air, soil, and water. The results of the research is flooded has good brown color, and followed by drip and aerobic condition, but the color difference between flooded and drip management is insignificant. The next factor are plant’s length, in the research there are 28 rice varieties for each management. But average plant length is higher in drip condition with than in aerobic or flooded condition, but it is insignificantly different. To continue, stem numbers are higher in aerobic condition than in drip and flooded condition, but the difference is insignificant. For further consideration, growth is much different at the harvesting time, because the aerobic condition is generally low yield to be compared with drip and flooded condition, which both of them do not have significant difference.

In order to explain to the farmers, these results will not satisfied enough, to be admitted. But in fact of more efficiency and effectiveness for production cost it will be able to push farmers to reach lower production cost. So, further research is still needed to calculate farmer’s profit due to their utilization of drip management to gain their awareness. Research about its effect environmentally and the importance effect of growth if it is applied in organic farming for future climate change mitigation, are also still needed.

Crop Quality ResearchCrop quality is one of the major factors that are affecting the whole growth

capabilities in the plant, beside the external factors. Crop quality is also very important to be connected to consumer’s acceptability because in the end, consumer is the one who will decide the trend of acceptance among food products. Since food

products is one of the consumer-based products so it is not hard to formulate acceptable grains when we already had the standard. So, this condition is commonly applied in the most developed countries. People of developed countries have already given their standard of quality for most products, moreover it is started by their application of standards for agricultural products since it has always been human’s basic needs, and it includes Japanese people.

Specialized to produce top-quality rice grain, Japanese farmers have to meet high expectancies in Japanese’s market. It is including soft, sweet, sticky, and good white color rice grains. So, to define the standard qualities, farmers have to be able to formulate it into grain characteristics. Furthermore, to find the formulate based on the standards definition, farmers, researchers, and governments have to work together to be able to find what factors that shaping the characters into the consumer’s standards. Finally, it has been found that amylose and amylopectin shape the taste and texture (sweet and sticky characters) factors, protein will shape the texture (soft character) factor, and the good white color grain is the further affection between crop total starches and proteins with environmental conditions, especially temperature.

In order to learn about the crop quality assessment, Scanning Electron Microscope is one of the advanced technologies that are used to evaluate grain quality directly and morphologically, together with palatability index machine and the chemical contents in the grain. Some samples that used to be analyzed are Yamada-nishiki and Koshihikari rice grain, Yamada-nishiki husk, wheat grain, flour, and hair. Some samples used to be analyzed scientifically but the rest of sample is only used for SEM utilization training (hair and husk of Yamada-nishiki grain).

Examination and understanding of quality can be shown from the pictures, as it is shown morphological description for all samples. First, about the samples for training utilization, as seen from the pictures it is very understandable that the hair condition is not in the good condition due to some clear damage and scar-similar-line in most part of the hair. It is possible to conclude that it is caused by some damaged because of external and internal factors. Next is the Yamada-nishiki husk morphology, it is shown that some hairs are connected to the husk and there are much small debris that have unknown relation with the husk, either it is only some physical parts of the husk. Now discussion is coming to be more scientific as it is samples examination. First sample is flour and next to it is wheat grain. Easily to say, from similar zoom power, it is understood that smaller size is possessed by flour than by wheat. Flour is also having quite good connection with each other to possess good quality for post-harvest processing purposes, while physically, wheat’s molecular components are bigger than flour as they are still connected as one big grain and having different purposes in post-harvest processing. Last samples are Koshihikari rice grain and Yamada-nishiki rice grain. Zoom power from each samples are clearly different, zoom power for Koshihikari is around 2000 times while Yamada-nishiki’s is 6000 times. Even there is a different in the zoom power it is clearly seen that Koshihikari’s layer are connected very well, and its molecules are smaller than Yamada-nishiki. For further explanation it can be concluded that heat treatment (gelatinization) will develop better in Koshihikari than Yamada-nishiki, based on its size of molecules and connection with other molecules. Thus, white color is stronger in Yamada-nishiki grain than Koshihikari grain, and it is caused by deepen molecules are deeper in Yamada-nishiki. So, chalky character is higher in Yamada-nishiki.

To conclude, nowadays crop quality management for rice grain in Japan is already in world-class level but in the future it is not enough to only keep the quality in the same level. Since in the last couple decades human race is facing, what so called, global warming and globalization, it is very important to find varieties which can adapt in rapid time and extreme condition while its quality is maintained in the top-class standard, not only for Japanese but also world wide. This management is need to be paralleled with farming system to reduce and optimize the production cost into lower level so it is economically accepted and having competitive level with other countries’ products price, since TPP Joint Agreement are already tickling in the second.