Product Pipeline
How do we determine what is valuable for the farmer?We're on a journey to identify the best hybrid. The goal of our hybrid research is to select hybrid combinations that increase value to growers, processors and end-users.
Developing parents is the first step in producing our superior hybrids. The hundreds of parents we produce result in thousands of hybrid combinations. All hybrid combinations are evaluated against five characteristics: grain yield, milling yield, disease resistance, grain quality and standability.
Our breeding work yields a constant supply of top quality products. Click here to view the experimental hybrids currently in our pipeline.
Diverse
We work closely with all segments of the rice industry to exceed customer expectations and to broaden our horizons.
Growers participate in shaping our hybrid offerings through district advisory councils and allowing us to put test plots in their fields so that they can observe and experience the new plants as we do.
Processors have the opportunity to assess hybrid grain before they are released to growers so that we can learn from them what we can do to improve the product even further. Once released consumer input is gathered through our consumer rice business. We welcome and encourage input from those buying our rice and record their comments to use in the future. Research and Technology personnel are located at RiceTec corporate headquarters in Alvin, Texas; in Newport, Arkansas; and at off-season locations in Puerto Rico and Hawaii. RiceTec's off-season locations allow us to grow rice throughout the year.
Innovative
The goal of RiceTec’s Research and Technology team is to increase profitability of rice production for the farmer through the exploitation of hybrid vigor. What is hybrid vigor you ask? Hybrid vigor describes the increased strength of different characteristics in hybrids; the possibility to obtain a genetically superior individual by combining the virtues of its parents. Examples of such exploitation would be superior yield and disease resistance along with seed specifically formulated to display stable performance in different environments. We believe that being innovative and being creative go hand in hand and we strive to be more than one step ahead of the game to take advantage of all the positive aspects of the business.
We test RiceTec hybrids across the entire Southern rice market. Our hybrids are tested across multiple years by our own researchers as well as under the careful watch of public collaborators. RiceTec estimates that in a single year, their yield trial system generates information equivalent to a decade of testing in a traditional rice breeding program. All new hybrids are compared with the best commercial products to ensure that only hybrids with superior grain yield, milling yield, disease resistance, grain quality and standability are introduced to the marketplace.
Technology Based
We have an in-depth understanding of the rice market because we invest in the latest cutting edge technology enabling us with advanced capabilities to understand and focus attention on the genetic traits that create the most value for the farmer. Technology also assists us in rapid introductions of new advancements; new parent lines to create new hybrids with better strengths.
We're only getting better.
We use molecular breeding to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our breeding programs. Molecular breeding techniques help us identify the hybrid combinations with characteristics desired by the market.
We're time conscious.
Locations in the chromosome (normally called markers) are traced in the laboratory using tissue from plants of any age. Thus, traits normally measured at later development stages can be identified earlier, enhancing breeding efficiency. We can incorporate a specific trait into a parent much faster than conventional breeding alone, and with a more predictable outcome. Using molecular breeding techniques we can reduce parent development time by five to six plant generations or two to three years.