Hom Mali +4 (Hommali Plus4)

Hom Mali+4 (Hommali Plus4)  Global warming means rice growing today faces major floods and widespread outbreaks of diseases and insect pests, especially in the irrigated areas of the central region and the lower north, where rice farming systems and chemical fertilizer use are high. Global warming favors outbreaks of diseases and insect pests, especially the brown planthopper. All of this makes rice growing environmentally destructive. Research evidence shows that high-rate N fertilizer speeds the release of N2O, an important greenhouse gas. High use of fertilizer and pest control substances therefore makes today's rice growing not environmentally friendly.

The approach to breeding environmentally friendly rice began in the Khao Dawk Mali 105 genetic background as early as 2006 (B.E. 2549), that is, rice that combines flash flood resistance, bacterial leaf blight resistance and brown planthopper resistance. In irrigated areas, flash-flood-tolerant rice has been developed and already resists the brown planthopper and bacterial leaf blight. But the great flood of 2011 (B.E. 2554) caused complete loss in central and lower northern paddy areas, and flash-flood-tolerant rice cannot survive flooding that stands for months. Isn't it time we laid out a long-term strategy to sustain food security and prosperity by creating rice that is both environmentally friendly and able to survive in times of crisis?

Developing new environmentally friendly rice varieties must give rice resistance to diseases and insect pests at a level high enough that farmers no longer need pest control substances. In addition, environmentally friendly rice must survive and yield even in a great flood, and cope with high and lower-than-normal temperatures, drought and saline soil. The rice breeding project has designed a large-scale core technology that stacks useful genes to develop environmentally friendly rice within 5 years, by developing the Gene Pyramiding system to be as fast and efficient as possible. The target gene traits to be bred include genes for resistance to brown planthopper, bacterial leaf blight and blast, sudden submergence, heat/cold tolerance, and the ability to set seed under stress (water deficit, saline soil, cold and extreme heat). Hom Mali+4 took more than 10 gene loci and crossed them into Hom Mali rice that can resist bacterial leaf blight, neck blast and planthopper and tolerate flash floods all at once, in only 4 years.