Hamdi Al-Mawafi, head of the National Project for the Development of Hybrid and Super Rice Production under Conditions of Water Scarcity and Climate Changes at the Field Crops Institute of the Agricultural Research Center and Undersecretary of the Rice Research Institute of the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture, won the Golden Award in the field of agriculture at the Geneva International Invention Fair 2022 in its exceptional session, which was His organization is supposed to be based on his creation of the rice variety "Sakha Super 300".

Al-Mowafi led an Egyptian research team in cooperation with the State of India since 1996, as Egypt started a project to produce water-saving and high-productivity hybrids, and he developed plant hybrids with the triple system, and his team succeeded in registering the rice variety "Sakha Super 300" in 2018, a variety that saves water It gives a high productivity of 20 to 25%, ranging between 5 thousand and 6 thousand tons per acre, compared to the traditional varieties, whose production ranges between two thousand and 3 thousand tons per acre.

In a farmer’s field, confirmatory experiments for the “Sakha Super 300” variety in Moussa locality in Egypt (social networking sites)

The largest and most important exhibition of innovation

The Geneva International Fair is the largest and most important exhibition for innovation, as it includes more than a thousand innovations in several fields such as engineering, building and construction, environmental protection, energy and other different sciences and industries.

It is noteworthy that the Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and Technology was the one who nominated the participants in the exhibition, and supported them on a competitive basis.

According to the Academy’s statement published on 4 April, the President of the Academy, Prof. Dr. Mahmoud Saqr, expressed his happiness with the result, which resulted in the winning of 9 innovators from the Egyptian team for 8 innovations, and the winning of all the participating Egyptians supported by the Academy, who were selected from among the applicants on the website. The Academy in a fair way to participate in the Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions 2022.

Dr. Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and Acting Minister of Health, expressed his happiness with these proud results, stressing that the best applicants were selected to represent Egypt in this important exhibition in accordance with the announced criteria.

"Sakha Super 300" rice variety, withstands water scarcity, adverse climatic conditions and salinity (communication sites)

Super 300

The area of ​​rationed rice at the end of the 2019 season reached one million and 76 thousand feddans, after increasing the available areas after developing water-saving strains, compared to only 724,000 feddans in 2018.

The Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture aims to increase the size of the areas of drought rice "low in water consumption", after positive results appeared for the new seed varieties that were used in agriculture, which are characterized by high productivity and saving water consumption.

Egypt elicits new strains in anticipation of the lack of control of a particular variety on the cultivated areas.

The Ministries of Agriculture and Irrigation developed a solution to the problem of water shortage by reducing the rice area to less than one million acres, which led the government to import quantities from abroad. Water consumed by traditional rice.

And the new innovation that won the only gold medal that Egypt got is an applied innovation to derive the “Sakha Super 300” rice variety, which withstands water scarcity for a period ranging between 8 and 10 days, and withstands adverse climatic conditions, in addition to salinity up to 4 thousand parts per million.

Ordinary varieties cannot survive without water, while dry rice differs from traditional rice in terms of its productivity and water consumption rates. It consumes 4,000 meters of water per acre compared to 6,000 for the traditional type, and achieves productivity of 5 tons per acre compared to only 4 tons for the conventional type.

wide acclaim

In turn, the head of the Agricultural Research Center, Dr. Muhammad Suleiman, praised Dr. Hamdi Al-Mawafi’s winning of the gold medal, and congratulated him for his role in agricultural scientific innovation to serve the objectives of applied scientific research in the field of new varieties of rice, in light of the country’s limited water resources and the need to devise varieties that face these challenges. challenges.

Soliman said - in press statements - that Al-Mawafi's winning of this award for the rice crop is a confirmation of the success of the Agricultural Research Center in the service of applied research that serves the objectives of the Egyptian state, and it reinforces the importance of collective scientific work through scientific and research cooperation between the Agricultural Research Center and the Academy of Scientific Research to publish varieties. Which is devised by the scientists of the Agricultural Research Center, which ended with a unique Egyptian success at the international level.

Al-Mawafi (right) explains the results of the project to Dr. Mahmoud Saqr, President of the Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research (social networking sites)

For his part, the Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, Mr. Al-Qaseer, congratulated Al-Muwafi, and considered his victory a new achievement to be added to the balance of the scientists of the Agricultural Research Center in the Ministry of Agriculture.

The minister said in press statements that he contacted Al-Mawafi to congratulate him on this unique scientific achievement, stressing that the ministry pays great attention to applied research and provides it with all aspects of support.

He pointed out that this innovation will be benefited from and the expansion of the application of the cultivation of the new rice variety, which contributes to increasing productivity and rationalizing water consumption.

It is expected that the new rice varieties will contribute significantly to enduring the water scarcity conditions that Egypt is currently experiencing, and help achieve self-sufficiency in high-quality Egyptian rice.