Tag: Matthew Van Weelden

Trends in Rice Production and Varieties in the Everglades Agricultural Area

Porntip Tinjuangjun, a postdoctoral plant pathology student from Thailand, collects seed from transgenic rice at the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences in Gainesville, Tuesday JUNE 10, 2003. By using cloning and other genetic engineering methods, she is developing seed that is resistant to bacterial infection, which is a major rice crop problem in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Rice production in the Everglades Agriculture Area (EAA) of Florida dates back nearly seven decades. For a brief period in the 1950s about 2,000 acres of rice was grown in the EAA. Rice was reintroduced in the EAA in 1977 after it was demonstrated that rice could be successfully incorporated into the sugarcane production cycle during the fallow period. This three-page fact sheet provides a history of rice production in Florida and information about rice varieties grown in Florida. Written by Jehangir H. Bhadha, Luigi Trotta, and Matthew VanWeelden and published by the Soil and Water Sciences Department.
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ss653