Project overview

Healthy Rice is a consortium of universities (Institute of Technology of Cambodia – ITC, Royal university of Agronomy - RUA, and University of Battambang – UBB), the General Directorate of Agriculture and the Department of Agricultural Land Resources Management (GDA/DALRM), and research teams (IRD, CIRAD, IRRI), working on sustainable rice production within an agroecology framework in Cambodia. This consortium benefit from a first grant from IRD “Jeunes Equipes Associées” (2019-2022) to establish such consortium and promote a multidisciplinary approach on agroecological approach on rice with the aim to promote soil health, plant health and human health.

Our main working hypothesis is that diversified rice-based cropping systems with no/low chemical inputs can be a sustainable alternative to the current conventional rice cropping. We hypothesize that better rice quality and farmer’s livelihood are based on an improving quality continuum from soil to plants based on the use of a wider biodiversity (from plants to soil biota) and needs a decrease in chemical inputs (fertilizers, pesticides).

Healthy Rice integrates different dimensions of research activities, from agronomy, soil health, to plant health and the quality of rice, on diversified cropping systems implementing agroecology procedures.

Main objective

The objectives are to identify practices and cropping systems allowing an increase in soil and plant health, a decrease in pesticide use and their occurrence as residues in rice.

The consortium is also an opportunity to strengthen a scientific community on agroecological transition for rice farming and related research for development topics.

Main activities

Diverse disciplines are pooled together with agronomy, soil ecology, plant health, and rice quality. Besides ITC (lead institution), the consortium brings together IRD, the Royal University of Agriculture, the University of Battambang, the General Directorate of Agriculture, CIRAD, and IRRI. We have the ambition to make emerge at the national level and with international recognition, R4D activities on rice-based agroecological practices where environmental preservation and food quality will be at the heart of our scientific questions. Our consortium is open to partnership and collaboration. Four main activities are described on the following figure.

Countries

Cambodia

Partnership

Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC, Cambodia), Institute of Research for Development (IRD, France), University of Battambang (UBB), Royal University of Agriculture (RUA), Department of Agricultural Land Resources Management (DALRM, GDA), CIRAD, IRRI