Alvin, Texas, USA
August 31, 2010
RiceTec Hybrids are once again proving their worth in a year of substantial disease pressure along the Texas Gulf Coast.
Kernel smut and bacterial panicle blight affected a large portion of the Texas Gulf Coast rice crop, but RiceTec Hybrids weathered the storm in better shape than conventional varieties due to their industry-leading disease package and the ability to cope with stressful growing conditions.
Reports from the field indicate initially that hybrid yields are 15 percent better than conventional varieties on average. Milling yields gathered from recent sales sheets indicate that RiceTec Hybrids are showing better than a four-point advantage in head rice milling yield and a one-point advantage in total rice milling yield.
³A four-point difference in head rice milling yields is roughly 15 to 20 cents/cwt back in the grower's pocket. When spread across 10,000 hundredweights, that adds up to a nice bit of cash,² says Brian Ottis, RiceTec industry support manager. ³Additionally, when you combine these milling yield numbers with the energy savings that millers encounter with hybrids due to a thinner bran layer, RiceTec Hybrids are a win-win for the grower and the miller.²
Van McNeely, RiceTec technical service director says, ³While many growers in the coastal areas are not seeing the bin-buster yields that 2009 gave us, they are seeing that the hybrid yield advantage is still there. We know that yields are off due to many factors, but this year again proves that RiceTec Hybrids will give growers better yield stability than conventional varieties year-to-year and field-to-field. Most of the time, this is realized mostly in yields, but this year is showing us that hybrid grain quality also seems to hold better than varieties in stressful conditions.
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