Cambodia

General Information

· Main climate: Tropical Wet and Dry, Tropical Wet

· Total land area of 17 652 000 ha

· Internal renewable water resources: 88.1 km³

· Incoming water flow 410 km³

· GNP per capita, 1998: PPP$ 1 246.

· Main food consumption: Rice, Meat, Maize, Fruit, Roots and Tubers

· Rice supply, 1999: 247.6 kg paddy/capita/year

Basic Statistics

Producing Zones and Cropping Seasons

The following table shows the rice-harvested areas in different producing zones.

Rice can be planted throughout the year, but there are two main cropping seasons: the wet and dry season.

Production Practices

Following figure shows the harvested area from different rice ecologies during the last five years.

Dry season irrigated rice and/or receding rice have increasingly replaced the area under deepwater. Approximately 40 percent of rice production areas in the wet season are occupied by medium varieties. A large number of farmers still plant several rice varieties in the same field in different small plots as a strategy to reduce risks and to distribute labour requirement in rice production. Wherever and whenever possible, other crops, especially vegetable ones, are planted after the harvest of the wet season rice crops. Only a very limited area is under rice-rice cropping system. Medium varieties, that are sensitive to photoperiod, flower between mid-October and mid-November in rainfed lowland ecosystems. There are many commercially important varieties in this group, especially aromatic and grain premium varieties. The late-duration varieties are of long duration and strongly photoperiod-sensitive and they flower only after mid-November. Dry season rice is mainly cultivated in the province of Takeo, Prey Veng, Kandal and Kampong Cham. At present, about 70 to 80 percent of the dry season cultivated areas are under high yielding varieties like IR 66, Kru and IR Kesar. More than 4,000 traditional rice varieties have been collected since 1990 by the CIAP. Since 1989, the Cambodian Varietal Recommendation Committee (CVRC) has released 34 varieties.

· Irrigated varieties

· Rainfed lowland varieties

· Deepwater varieties

· Upland varieties

Land preparation is done either with animal traction or small tractors. The most predominant method of crop establishment is transplanting. Cow manure is generally applied at a rate of up to 25 t/ha at the time of seedbed preparation and a small amount of inorganic fertilizer (urea) can be applied later to the nursery. Late-duration varieties are generally transplanted more sparsely than the early and medium ones. Application of farmyard manure, compost or chemical fertilizer to the transplanted main fields is common in rainfed lowland rice. Farmers use a variety of methods for threshing rice, including hand threshing, floor-threshing and mechanical. The following table shows the responses of rice to fertilizer application.

Constraints and Issues of Sustainable Production

• Drought stresses and floods in large rice areas under rainfed conditions. The drought stress is more frequent during July and August, while the floods are more frequent in September and October.

• Low soil fertility in sandy and acidic soils.

• Weeds, stem borers, brown plant hopper, gallmidge, and bacterial leaf blight.

• Rural poverty.

• Lack of draught animal, inputs and credits are major socio-economic constraints.

• Weak research and extension services.

Rice yield in the country is still low, suggesting large potential for increasing rice production through yield improvement. In order to attain this, appropriate national rice research and development programmes needs to be established to provide support to the development and transfer of high yielding varieties and improved crop management systems. The transfer of the Rice Integrated Crop Management system RICECHECK as well as the provision of adequate support in-terms of credit and inputs supplies are essential for increasing rice production.

The following table shows the costs of rice production.

Research and Development Institutions

• Agronomy Department, 14 Pokambo, 855 Phnom Penh, Cambodia;, Tel (017) 200353.

• Cambodia-IRRI Australia Project, P.O. Box 1, Phnom Penh, Phone: (23) 64115, Fax: (855-18) 810796, Email: IN%[email protected]

• Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery, Phnom Penh; Phone: (855)-12-807-456 Fax (855)-23-720-657, Chief ASEAN Unit