Drought, iron (Fe) toxicity, and flooding are important abiotic stresses that affect rice production in Africa. Several African rice (Oryza glaberrima) accessions have been reported to have a tolerance to these abiotic stresses, but systematic evaluations were not performed across large African rice collection. In 2007-2008, Marie Noelle Ndjiondjop and her team evaluated 211 Oryza glaberrima accessions along with known checks under drought and irrigated field conditions in upland ecology in Benin. Based on the phenotypic data generated in 2-years, the team identified five high yield accessions under both drought and optimal growing conditions (Ndjiondjop et al. 2012).

Three separate studies were also conducted in 2012-2014 by the former AfricaRice breeder, Dr R. Venuprasad, and his team to identify promising accessions that are tolerant to lowland drought stress (Shaibu et al. 2018), iron toxicity (Sikirou et al. 2018), and flooding (Agbeleye et al. 2019). The team conducted a preliminary screening of about 2,000 Oryza glaberrima accessions conserved at the AfricaRice genebank along with Oryza sativa checks, followed by evaluation of smaller subsets of the best 18-74 accessions based on the preliminary screening data. The team identified (1) four accessions that consistently produced higher grain yield both under drought stress and irrigated (optimal) conditions in Nigeria and Benin (Shaibu et al. 2018); (2) three accessions that yielded higher than the Oryza sativa checks under iron toxicity but with similar yields under control growing conditions in Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Liberia (Sikirou et al. 2018); and (3) one accession for submergence, four accessions for stagnant flooding, and six accessions for anaerobic germination ability (Agbeleye et al. 2019). Overall, the four studies identified a total of 23 O. glaberrima accessions that showed a promising level of tolerance to the different abiotic stresses, which could be used as donors in developing high yielding rice varieties suited to areas affected by drought, iron toxicity or flooding in West Africa. rima* accessions that showed a promising level of tolerance to the different abiotic stresses, which could be used as donors in breeding programs for developing high yielding rice varieties suited to drought, iron toxicity or flooding affected areas in West Africa.

• 10.2135/cropsci2017.04.0255
• 10.1016/j.fcr.2016.04.016
• 10.2135/cropsci2011.05.0287
• http://sabraojournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/SABRAO-J-Breed-Genet-512-128-150-Agbeleye.pdf