Efforts to increase rice food production in the future are faced with increasing climate uncertainty due to global climate change. One of the impacts is changes in strains or biotypes of pests and diseases, which are increasingly rapid. To minimize the impact of climate change on national rice production. The purpose of this study was to produce upland rice lines that resistant to blast disease and had good rice quality. The research carried at Lampung and Sukabumi of 2018. A total of 17 lines and three comparison varieties tested using a randomized block design with four replications. Observations made on the agronomic character, yield components and quality of rice. The results showed that the average plant height in the two locations ranged from 90 to 136 cm. The number of productive tillers at two locations it’s the average of 11 panicles. The mean flowering age did not differ from the harvest age between the lines tested at the two locations. The length of panicle lines tested at two locations averaged 25.5 cm. The average weight of 1000 grains at both locations is 26.1 grams. Grain yield in Lampung averaged 4.7 t ha−1, higher than in Sukabumi 3.6 t ha−1. Five lines had no significant difference with Limboto both at the Lampung location and in Sukabumi. Among all the lines tested, there are three lines with the medium of chalkiness or LMM size. The results of testing in the greenhouse against blast disease obtained one line resistant to three blast races.

The use of upland rice variety is an effort to expand rice cultivation to dry land due to the decreasing of fertile land in Indonesia. To develop a high yielding rice line, a primary population with high genetic diversity is needed in character related to grain yield. This experiment aimed to study the genetic variability of some important characters of upland rice lines as primary data for the selected program. The research was carried out in the farmland of Mirit Village, Kebumen, Central Java. The genetic material consisted of 203 new promising lines and five varieties as a check, namely Inpago 6, Inpago 8, Limboto, Situpatenggang, and Situbagendit. This observation yield trial used an augmented design with five replicates of the check varieties, with a spacing of 30 x 15 cm. The data analysis showed that the rice lines, line vs. check, and block were significantly different in the number of productive tillers. The significant effects of lines with the check varieties were in plant height, flowering age, harvest age, and a number of productive tillers. The number of productive tillers had wide genetic variation, broad-sense heritability, and high genetic gain so that it can be utilized as selection criteria. Twelve lines were identified as a higher number of productive tillers, and three lines had a higher yield compared to the best varieties of Situbagendit.

Drought is a major problem in rice production in rainfed areas. Climate change has exacerbated the negative effect of drought on the sustainability of rice production. Development of drought tolerant rice varieties is important strategy to minimize rice yield losses in drought prone areas. This study aimed to determine drought tolerance of twenty-five advanced rice breeding lines under artificial drought environment and to evaluate their agronomic performance in rainfed lowland rice areas. Evaluation of drought tolerance was carried out at seedling stage in greenhouse. Yield trial was conducted in rainfed rice area in Indramayu district, West Java province, during wet season 2017-2018. The trial was designed in randomized complete block design with four replications. Result from this study indicated a variation in drought tolerance of twenty-five breeding lines. Two lines showed highly tolerant response to drought in seedling stage namely B15231-MR-10-1 and B15143C-TGB-12. The grain yield of highly drought tolerant rice line B15231-MR-10-1 (4.81 t ha-1) was comparable to popular rice varieties Situ Bagendit (4.56 t ha-1) and Ciherang (5.09 t ha-1). Drought tolerant rice breeding lines identified from this study have potential to be adopted by farmers in drought prone rainfed areas as an adaptation strategy to the impact of climate change.

Sustainability of rice (Oryza sativa L.) production in high-altitude tropical upland is challenged by various abiotic and biotic problems. The main problems include low temperatures and blast disease. Farmers in high-altitude tropical uplands of Indonesia are still growing traditional rice varieties due to the absence of improved adaptive varieties. Development of improved varieties which are adapted to the high-altitude upland environment is therefore needed to increase productivity. This study aimed to investigate the interaction of genotype and environment of upland rice varieties across ten high-altitude upland locations in Indonesia and to determine their adaptability in the target areas. In addition, screening on blast disease and grain quality analysis was performed to characterize the genotypes. Significant interaction effects between genotype and the environment were observed for all agronomic characters. Genotype adaptability was determined based on the regression coefficient of grain yield and the environmental index. Genotypes such as B14168E-MR-10 adapted well in locations with low environmental indexes. In contrast, genotypes such as B11592F-MR-23-2-2 adapted well in locations with high environmental indexes. Screening using ten rice blast races showed that upland rice genotypes had a broad spectrum of resistance. Most of the genotypes had intermediate amylose content in the grains. Recently, the lines B14168E-MR-10 and B11592F-MR-23-2-2 have been approved to be released as new, improved rice varieties for high-altitude upland in Indonesia, namely Luhur 1 and Luhur 2, respectively. Both varieties are expected to be adopted by farmers in high-altitude upland to increase rice productivity in this environment.

The Indonesian government continuously strives to increase rice production in an effort to meet the staple food needs of almost 270 million people and to turn Indonesia to become a rice exporter country. One of the strategic efforts is to expand the planted area of rice outside irrigated rice areas. Upland is one of the potential areas that continues to be developed to support the increase of national rice production. While upland is not an ideal ecosystem for rice plants to grow, the opportunity to produce rice in this ecosystem is promising, especially using rice as an intercropping in plantation. This effort requires the availability of adaptive varieties to low light intensity conditions. The breeding program to develop shade-tolerant rice varieties has been carried out by the Indonesian Center for Rice Research (ICRR) through the conventional breeding program. Breeding populations were produced by crossing local varieties, national leading varieties and introduced varieties. The selection of shading adaptive lines was carried out using both artificial shading and natural shading in the target plantation areas. New shade tolerant rice varieties have been recently released, namely Rindang 1 Agritan and Rindang 2 Agritan which have the potential to be utilized by farmers for intercropping rice cultivation in the agroforestry systems.