Rice production meeting in Breaux Bridge Feb. 9

Breaux Bridge – A rice production meeting has been planned for Tuesday, Feb.y 9 at 6 p.m. at the county agent’s office, 114 Courthouse Street.

County Agenty Alfred Guidry invites all producers and agribusiness people to attend this very informative meeting.

The LSU AgCenter has released two new Clearfield rice varieties for 2010. The lines will be named CL111 and CL261. Because both varieties contain the LSU AgCenter-developed gene for resistance to imidazolinone herbicides, they can both be used in the Clearfield production system for the control of red rice and other rice weeds. They both will be grown primarily for seed production in 2010; however, .

A limited amount of seed of both should be available for commercial production.

CL111 is a very early maturing, short-stature, long-grain, variety. It will be the earliest Clearfield long-grain variety available for commercial production in Louisiana. It has averaged 79 days from emergence to 50 percent heading compared with 83 for both CL151 and CL131. The earliness will help spread out the harvest when a large acreage is planted over a short time, which is a common situation in southwest Louisiana producers who make this a common part of their production program.

CL111 has a short-stature plant type and is moderately resistant to lodging. It has averaged 37 inches in plant height in three years of testing compared with 37 and 33 inches for CL151 and CL131, respectively. The leaves, lemma and palea of CL111 are glabrous (smooth). The spikelet is straw-colored. The apiculus is light purple at heading and the color fades as the grains approach maturity. The grain is nonaromatic. CL111 is susceptible to sheath blight and blast and moderately susceptible to straight head disorder.

Cereal chemistry characteristics for the new variety are consistent with those for other southern U.S. long-grain varieties. The new variety has excellent yield potential and grain quality. It has averaged slightly below CL151 in per acre yield in multi-location, multi-year testing. It has, however, shown consistently high whole-grain milling yields and a lower percentage of chalky grains in milled rice samples. CL111 has also displayed excellent second crop yield potential in limited testing over the previous few years.

CL261 is an early maturing, semi dwarf, medium-grain Clearfield rice variety. It will be the first commercially available medium-grain variety in the Clearfield production system. Because of market dynamics, the number of acres seeded to medium grains was up substantially in Louisiana in 2009. CL261 was originally selected from the cross ‘Bengal’/CL161’ made at the Rice Research Station in 2002. The line originated as an F5 bulk of a single progeny row (0610333) in the Clearfield breeding nursery in Crowley in 2006. It was evaluated in the Clearfield Preliminary Yield trial in 2007 (experimental designation 07XC065) and was entered into the Clearfield Multi-Location test in 2008.

CL261 has a short-stature plant type and has averaged 39 inches in plant height in two years of testing compared with 39 and 33 inches for CL151 and CL131, respectively. However, CL261 has shown good resistance to lodging. CL261 is earlier in maturity than most other medium-grain varieties, averaging 79 days from emergence to 50 percent heading. The leaves, lemma and palea of CL261 are glabrous (smooth). The spikelet is straw-colored. The apiculus is light purple at heading, and the color fades as the grains approach maturity. The grain is nonaromatic. Cereal chemistry characteristics for the new variety are consistent with those for other southern U.S. medium-grain varieties. CL261 is susceptible to sheath blight and blast and moderately susceptible to straight head disorder. The new medium-grain variety has shown good and consistent yield performance in limited testing. The milling quality (whole-grain milling yields) has been exceptional, and milled grain appearance is very good.