Image used for representational purpose.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has successfully developed two genome edited rice varieties, which will be formally announced in New Delhi on Sunday (May 4, 2025) by Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. The ICAR said the development of such seeds was “first-ever such achievement” in the country using cutting-edge genome editing technology.

The first variety, named as DRR Dhan 100 Kamala, was developed from a popular high yielding green rice Samba Mahsuri and the second variety is from Maharashtra Technology University 1010 (MTU1010), which is also widely used by farmers across the country.

The new variety developed from Samba Mahsuri can be harvested 15-20 days ahead of its original. The yield is almost 25% more, which is about eight tonnes more per hectare. Each panicle of the paddy will give 450 to 500 more grains in this variety than the original crop.

“This is climate-friendly as this variety uses water and minerals judiciously. This is tolerant to increase in temperature too,” a source in ICAR said. The variety can be cultivated by direct seeding method too.

Named as Pusa DST Rice 1, the variety developed from MTU1010 is a ‘salinity tension tolerant’ crop. When cultivated under areas that have national average of salinity, the new variety produced 9.66% additional yield than MTU1010. Similarly, in alkaline conditions, the new variety gave 14.66% more yield than its original and under ‘salinity tension’ conditions, the yield of the new variety was 30.36%.