BRRI Dhan102: An Irrigated Ecosystem-Friendly Zinc-Enriched Rice Variety for Bangladesh

An enhancement over already available zinc-enriched rice varieties for Bangladesh is the recently announced by BRRI dhan102 class of rice, which has long slender grain and is high yielding and ideal for Bangladesh's irrigated ecology. The variety has satisfactorily passed the Proposed Variety Trial (PVT) conducted in the farmers’ field in Boro 2020-21 season. As a result, National Seed Board (NSB) approved this variety for commercial cultivation in the Boro season (dry season) in 2022. It was modern plant type with 103 cm plant height and matures by 150 days. The proposed variety showed 0.27 t/ha higher yield than check variety BRRI dhan29. Identifying characters of this variety are green leaf, intermediate plant height, erect flag leaf, long slender grain, and intermediate leaf senescence grain. In average, it can produce 8.10 t/ha grain yield, but it has potentiality to give 9.55 t/ha grain yield. Thousand grain weight of the variety is 22.7 gm and head rice yield is 62%. The rice has zinc content 25.5 mg/kg, 28% amylose content with 7.5% protein content. Farmers can be benefited financially from growing the zinc-enriched variety BRRI dhan102 and the nation as a whole will be benefited nutritionally from its production throughout the Boro season (dry season).