Emerging Rice Postharvest Technology for Reducing Yield Lossespascapanen.litbang.pertanian.go.id/.../143-164.MARTINGUMMERT.pdf · M. Gummert, International Rice Research Institute,

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Emerging Rice Postharvest Technology for Reducing Yield Losses

M. Gummert, International Rice Research Institute, Manila, Philippines For presentation at the “International Conference on Agricultural Postharvest Handling and Processing” November 19-21, 2013, at the Sultan Hotel, Jakarta, Indonesia.

Keywords: Combine harvesting, Hermetic storage, Solar drying, Value chain, Quality incentives

Abstract Rice postharvest losses in Southeast Asia are typically 15−25% and, if quality

deterioration along the postharvest chain is factored in, farmers and processors are losing up to 50% of the value of their produce. Postharvest value chains with many different actors lead to delays in postharvest operations and make it difficult to minimize losses and maximize quality along the rice value chain.

Labor shortages caused by migration to urban centers and intensification of rice production often result in high harvesting cost and excessive losses. Combine harvesters have therefore rapidly been adopted: in Thailand in the mid-1990s, in Vietnam at the turn of the century, since 2007 in Cambodia, and right now the first combine harvesters are being used in Indonesia, Myanmar, and the Philippines.

Additional harvests during the wet season and the very wet paddy coming from combine harvesters have led to a rapid increase in demand for better drying technologies. The flatbed dryer has been successfully introduced in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, with more than 6,000 units now being used. Since 2007, IRRI has worked with national partners to transfer the technology from Vietnam to neighboring countries, resulting in rapid adoption in Myanmar, Cambodia, and the Philippines. A new, low-cost solar dryer to improve sun-drying was developed in 2012 and it is going to be market tested in selected countries in 2014.

Hermetic storage systems, which provide modified atmosphere storage by natural means, can help farmers and the industry to safely store seeds and grains for more than a year while maintaining seed germination and milling quality even under tropical conditions. This helps control moisture and insects without pesticides.

To increase the speed of adoption, new methodologies and support services were developed and piloted. These include participatory impact pathway analysis (PIPA) for the identification and analysis of actor-specific impact pathways, Learning Alliances, and the development and verification of business models for postharvest technologies.

Contract farming as a mutually beneficial way to increase farmers’ benefits from their rice harvests and to guarantee that rice millers get optimum quality paddy as input to their rice mills is increasingly used in Asia.

This presentation provides an overview on new or improved postproduction technologies for rice and on new methodologies for scaling them out for the benefit of millions of rice farmers and consumers.

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