ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some of the more important advances in rice science in the tropics, to provide, especially for persons who are not rice scientists, a concise account of the modern rice technology that has so decidedly widened the scope for increasing rice production in the tropics. The traditional tropical rice plant, an indica type, is tall with long drooping leaves. The impact of the improved plant type is most evident when substantial amounts of nitrogen fertilizer are applied to the rice crop. When ammonium sulfate or urea is applied to rice soils, some of its nitrogen is absorbed by the rice plant. The wide spread of the modern rice varieties since about 1966 stimulated many studies to determine the optimum water management conditions for the short-statured rice plants. There are only two important bacterial diseases of rice, bacterial blight and bacterial streak.
