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Thoughts on Rice
This podcast is for growers, PCAs, consultants, and other industry professionals in the California rice industry. We'll primarily be focusing on the Sacramento Valley and Delta Region of California. The UCCE Rice Farm Advisors aim to deliver extension information relating to the California rice industry.
Find out more about UCCE and California rice here!
Thoughts on Rice
Rice Quality Assurance Program with Timothy Blank
Together, the UCCE Rice Farm Advisors seek to provide relevant, topical research-backed information relating to CA rice production.
Timothy Blank (Director of Seed Certification Operations, the Foundation Seed Program Executive Director, and the Certified Seed Program Advisor for the California Crop Improvement Association) and Sarah Marsh sit down to talk about the California Crop Improvement Association (CCIA) Rice Seed Quality Assurance Program (Program), which provides a uniform and unbiased quality control system and marketing tool for crop seeds that cannot be verified and merchandised as a class of certified seed as defined by the Association of Official Seed Certifying Agencies (AOSCA).
California Crop Improvement Association Resources
CCIA Website
Certified Seed Sampler Training
Other Resources
Mention of an agrichemical does not constitute a recommendation, merely the sharing of research findings. Always follow the label. The label is the law. Find out more at ipm.ucanr.edu.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of the University of California. The material and information presented here is for general purposes only. The "University of California" name and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.
UC ANR is an equal opportunity provider and employer
Hello and welcome to Thoughts on Rice, a podcast hosted by the University of California Cooperative Extension Rice Advisors. I'm one of your hosts, Sarah Marsh, and I'm a rice farm advisor for Colusa and Yolo Counties.
SPEAKER_00:I'm Whitney from The Forest. I'm the Cooperative Extension Rice Advisor for Sutter, Yuba, Placer, and Sacramento counties.
SPEAKER_04:My name is Luis Espino. I'm the Rice Farming Systems Advisor for Butte and Glynn counties. I'm Michelle
SPEAKER_02:Leinfelder-Miles. I'm a Farm Advisor in the Delta region. I work on all sorts of field crops, grains and forages, but one of those is rice. And the counties that I cover are San Joaquin, Sacramento, Yolo-Salano, and Contra Costa counties.
SPEAKER_01:Together, the UCCE Rice Farm Advisors seek to provide relevant, topical, research-backed information relating to California rice production. In a previous episode, we were fortunate enough to get to talk to Timothy Blank of the California Crop Improvement Association. He detailed a little bit about the Rice Seed Certification Program program in California. However, in California, not all of our rice lines qualify for rice seed certification for a variety of reasons. To qualify for rice seed certification, a rice line has to have a history of known development, and there has to be traceable, formal, continued maintenance of that plant line in order to assure that it is indeed the variety that we call it. Now, for a lot of our specialty lines, our lines that weren't necessarily developed in California, it's impossible to trace that back. However, these lines add immense value not only to California rice production, but to the geography of the food landscape as a whole. The Rice Seed Quality Assurance Program was enacted in 2017 in response to this quandary. This allows us to certify specialty rice lines that might not qualify for the Rice Seed Certification Program. program. Timothy Blank is here to give us a bit more information. Earlier we got to talk to Timothy Blank about the seed certification process in California rice. And one thing we didn't really touch on is that in rice, there are actually several lines that are ineligible for certification due to a variety of reasons. Timothy, can you talk to me a little bit about what some of the reasons that these rice lines might be ineligible for seed certification?
SPEAKER_03:Yes, the quality assurance program was developed specifically for these varieties to bring them into the fold of our inspections and the reason they can't be certified they're not certifiable is due to their history they a lot of them came in from usda accessions Somebody at some point in history submitted a sample or multiple samples of a variety for preservation in the seed bank and then those can be pulled out and regenerated and produced as a variety. However, when that variety is brought back into the picture through that means, there is a definite gap of maintenance. It's not coming directly from the maintainer. It's not being maintained by the maintainer. So we've developed standards for those varieties and we can't even in some cases be 100% sure that that is a variety because there is that lack of continuity. But we need a program in place to inspect them to make sure that the in particular red rice is absent in those in those varieties. And I'll mention some of the more common ones that are in our program. Probably the most common one is Koshi Akari. It's a Japanese variety that was released in the 1950s in Japan. There's other Japanese varieties, Akita Kamachi, Hitomobori, Sasanashiki. Those varieties are all in our program in California. And we inspect them for freedom of red rice. There's Coco Rose, which is a California variety that was released decades ago. But there's some question about official maintenance of that variety. For decades, it was maintained outside of a seed certification program and only recently brought into the program. And then we have Italian, older Italian varieties like Arborio and Carnaroli. So those varieties are also in a very limited amount of production in California.
SPEAKER_01:You kind of touched on this, but the Rice Seed Quality Assurance Program was actually enacted pretty recently in 2017 in response partially to the rising numbers of weedy rice in rice in California. Can we have a quick briefer on the difference between the Quality Assurance Program and the Seed Certification Program?
SPEAKER_03:So yeah, let me talk about that little bit of recent history. In the 2014-2015 It became apparent that there was weedy rice in California. It was very... hush-hush, and so it was very difficult to determine how big a problem it was. But it was becoming apparent that the main culprits in the spread of these types was coming from outside of the seed certification program. In 2016, this became more of a public issue, and then within a year, the Rice Certification Act Advisory Board, they are operating under the authority of the Rice Certification Act of 2000. The Rice Certification Act of 2000 was created to mitigate threats to the rice industry. We have, as an industry, collective threats that could hurt our markets. And we don't want to prevent certain things from being produced, but we want to provide a structure for how to bring in rice from other areas. We don't want to say you can't bring rice from another area, but if we want to avoid diseases from being introduced into California, follow these protocols. The Rice Certification Act handles that. If you want to do research on genetically engineered rice, we don't want to prohibit that in California, but there has to be protocols in place of how to do that in greenhouses and proper isolation. That original Rice Certification Act of 2000 did not really address red rice too much because it wasn't an issue. When it became an issue, the Rice Certification Act was amended in 2017. That's a marketing order. It has teeth. And what it did was it said by 2019, all rice in California has to be planted with either certified seed or seed from a quality assurance program that's approved by the committee. And the committee is being the Rice Certification Act Advisory Board. What that did from 2017 to 2019, it brought in the rest of the seed industry that was operating outside of a formal structure. I would estimate based off the numbers I've looked at, About 20% of the rice seed production prior to that amendment was being handled outside of a seed certification program or a quality assurance program. Now, probably near 100% is. And so back to the original question, what's the Quality Assurance Program? It's to handle those varieties that can't be certified but ensure that they do not have red rice in their seed production. That should eliminate further spread of red rice.
SPEAKER_01:And so the field inspections for the Rice Quality Assurance Program, are they pretty similar to the field inspections for the Rice Seed Certification Program?
SPEAKER_03:They're almost identical. The only real difference is we have a higher tolerance for other varieties in the QA program. For example, in certified class rice, we have a tolerance of 1 in 5,000. In the QA program, the equivalent class is QA3. And we have a tolerance of 1 in 1,000. So we allow more off-types as long as those off-types aren't weedy red rice.
SPEAKER_01:And then just going back a little bit, you mentioned the classes and the quality assurance program. Can you say them again and then what their levels might correspond to in the seed certification program?
SPEAKER_03:Yes, we have four classes in both programs. In the QA program, we have breeder, QA1, QA2, QA3. And the certification program We have breeder, foundation, registered, certified. And those are the equivalent classes.
SPEAKER_01:Perfect. And then for those who didn't listen to your earlier episode about the rice certification program, what kind of work takes place at the field inspections?
SPEAKER_03:So we're checking for separation from overflight contaminations. We're checking for problematic weeds, excessive levels of those weeds. We're checking for varietal contaminations. We're checking for weedy rice. We're inspecting for diseases. We'll note diseases of concern, seed-borne diseases like rice blast, bacani, smut. Anything issue that can affect seed quality is what we are inspecting for.
SPEAKER_01:And then the inspections that might take place at harvest and post-harvest, is that, again, similar to the rice certification program?
SPEAKER_03:Yes, there are inspections of the combines right prior to harvest. Those would be done by the Ag Commissioner's office. And post-harvest, the same seed conditioners that are cleaning, conditioning certified rice are also conditioning QA rice. And so they have to follow the same annual agreements and affidavits, ensuring that they are cleaning out equipment when changing varieties, maintaining records to make sure that the variety identity is kept all along the way. to properly sample the seed to make sure that the samples are representative prior to going to the seed lab for testing of the seed lot.
SPEAKER_01:Do you know some of the reasons why a grower might choose to grow a seed that can't be certified? So maybe one of the Arborio or Canaroli or some of the other varieties that aren't our traditional California lines that have been developed.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, those varieties... I would say 100% of those specialty varieties have a tendency to be lower yielding. You might have an average when we're talking about your Calrose varieties, your standard Calrose varieties, you're getting 9,000 pounds, 10,000 pounds per acre. Here, you're going to get in these specialty varieties 5,000, 6,000 pounds per acre. And in addition to being low-yielding, because most of these, if not all of these, are older varieties, decades-old varieties, and not adapted for California in particular, they And so you're harvesting on the ground and getting low yields. The reason they grow them is because they fetch a higher price. and it's apparently worthwhile uh with all the headache that that comes along with it
SPEAKER_01:yeah because from the sound of it it's not something that you just throw in the field grow it all season and then you just come through and harvest you probably have to be a little bit more patient and possibly a bit more of a gambler
SPEAKER_03:yes yes definitely um but there are there are thousands of acres of these varieties in commercial production uh in california just for for For a little bit of comparison, this last year in our seed certification program and QA program, we had a total of exactly 24,000 acres. A little bit less than a thousand acres of that, 24,000, was QA varieties.
SPEAKER_01:Can you tell me a bit about the responsibilities of the handlers and mills that contact the rice post-harvest?
SPEAKER_03:The amended Rice Certification Act included provisions for the handlers and the mills. They are responsible to ensure that the seed that they're bringing in or the commercial crop that they're bringing in was planted by fields that were planted with QA seed or certified seed. What we have as documentation that the grower can produce to show the handler is that the seed that they planted was done within the scope of the law. of the marketing order is bulk sales certificates. We don't have tags in rice because it's not bagged seed. What we have in lieu of a tag is a bulk sales certificate that the seed warehouse will generate and provide to the grower planting the commercial crop. The grower then should retain that bulk sales certificate and if he needs it to document that The seed he produced for commercial production was done in accordance with the marketing order. He can produce that document. So that's what we have available for documentation.
SPEAKER_01:And then just one more question I have for you. If a grower is listening who's interested in hearing more about applying to grow a certified seed, where can they go for more information?
SPEAKER_03:Anybody can be a rice grower. if they follow our seed standards and if they have access to planting seed. So if you want to be a seed grower, it sounds interesting, go to our website, look over the standards at ccia.ucdavis.edu and there's contact information on there. Feel free to contact me and I can walk you through the process.
SPEAKER_01:Fantastic. I've learned a lot just talking to you. right now. Great. Thank you so much, Timothy. For more information about the UC Cooperative Extension Rice Program, you can find all of these resources linked in our show notes, the UC Rice blog, the UC Agronomy Rice website, and our newsletters. Rice Briefs, which covers Colusa Yolo, Rice Notes, which covers Uris Sutter, Rice Leaf, which covers Butte and Glen, and Field Notes, which refers to rice in the Delta region of California. Stay tuned for our latest newsletter update, which should be released in early November. Thanks for listening. And remember, like the growers like to say, have a rice life. Mention of an agrochemical does not constitute a recommendation, merely the sharing of research findings. Always follow the label. The label is the law. Find out more at ipm.ucanr.edu. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of the University of California. The material and information presented here is for general purposes only. The University of California name and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.
