Drought-tolerant rice varieties

Drought is widespread climatic stress and can occur at any time and duration during the cropping season affecting crop physiological, biochemical, and molecular processes drastically reducing rice yield.
The extent of loss due to drought varies depending on the timing, intensity, and duration of drought.
To avoid drought, farmers quite often rely on early maturing varieties. If a drought occurs early in the season, these short-duration varieties can be sown late.
Rice plant overcomes drought stress through two mechanisms viz. drought escape and drought avoidance. Drought escape is an adaptive mechanism in which rapid plant development occurs to enable plants to complete the full life-cycle before the drought event.
In drought avoidance, the plant maintains relatively higher tissue water content even when there is less water content in the soil. The development of drought-tolerant varieties will greatly enhance and stabilize rice productivity in drought-prone areas.
Depending upon the severity of drought, Sahbhagidhan short duration (105-110 days) variety offers a yield advantage of 0.8-1.0 t ha^-1 both under upland and lowland conditions.