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Bangladesh has made tremendous strides in the development of modern rice varieties as well as boosting domestic rice production up. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the performance, identify the criteria and constraints, as well as find out the drivers influencing the adoption and intensity of adoption of BRRI developed modern rice cultivars in Boro season. A total of 780 randomly selected farmers were interviewed using a structured schedule from 13 upazilas of the Mymensingh district. Descriptive statistics used mainly to evaluate the socio-economic characteristics of farmers as well as the performance of BRRI varieties, and a censored Tobit regression model employed to figure out the drivers of BRRI variety adoption. The results showed that in the Boro season about 85% area of Mymensingh district was covered by BRRI varieties and yielded 5.93 t/ha on average. The outcome of the model indicates that variables such as farmers schooling, farm size, farming experience, training and extension service, demonstration, distance to the nearby market, higher yield capacity, number of cultivated varieties, higher price, and good taste were influential drivers of adopting BRRI variety during the Boro season. This finding recommends that breeders should emphasize the farmers preferences while developing varieties, as well as providing training and field demonstration for spreading newly established BRRI rice varieties. [J Bangladesh Agril Univ 2020; 18(3.000): 660-666]

This study aims to investigate whether Bangladesh has a comparative advantage in producing rice in the long run for the Boro season. With that view, we estimated Domestic Resource Cost (DRC) as an indicator of comparative advantage using the time series data. Data were obtained from the food situation database, published by the Food Planning and Monitoring Unit, Ministry of Food, Peoples Republic of Bangladesh. The analyses show that Bangladesh has a comparative advantage in modern rice production in the Boro season at import substitution. DRC values for Boro season are less than 1 in all the periods (2010/11 to 2019/20) except 2018/19. The sensitivity analysis shows that all the indicators pertinent to this particular analysis strongly influence DRC values. The government and policymakers should focus on price spread between the wholesale to retail levels, the border price of rice at the farm gate level, and the border prices of rice, urea, TSP, and MoP of farm gate level to achieve a long-run comparative advantage. Research efforts need to be prioritized for developing new varieties, especially for the Boro season with higher yield potential. [J Bangladesh Agril Univ 2021; 19(3.000): 361-370]

This study was an attempt to investigate the economic performance of stress tolerant rice varieties in different abiotic stress prone areas (submergence, drought, and salinity) of Bangladesh. The study used production frontier approach to measure the technical efficiency at the farm level. Benefit-cost analysis revealed that farmers in all stress environments obtained positive margin on cash cost basis and the profit became negative on full cost basis in all environments with exception for submergence. That means rice production was marginally benefited to farmers in all the stress environments. Farm specific technical efficiency of all stress environments indicated that large farmers were comparatively more efficient due to their economic solvency as they could apply adequate amount of inputs in due time with proper doses. Inefficiency model indicated that farm size, farmers ‘education, households’ size, farming experience, extension contact, and main occupation of the farmers, were the important factors causing variations in the efficiency. However, BRRI released stress tolerant rice varieties had significant positive impact on technical efficiency. Plausible policies have been recommended according to the study outcomes.

Flood is responsible for the agricultural production scheme and livelihood well-being in Bangladesh. It is the most frequent catastrophe that affects crop production in terms of area coverage and yield. However, a normal flood is beneficial for the ecology and environment. As rice is the most important crop for sustaining the food security of the country, this study identified the threshold level of flooding for rice area coverage and production. The study used the time series data of annual rice area coverage, production, and flooding area in a well-established threshold regression model. The empirical results expose that flooding 22 percent of the geographical area is the threshold value for rice area coverage and production in Bangladesh. Up to the threshold level (22 percent), a one square kilometer increase in flooding would increase the rice area coverage by 31 hectares, as flooding would bring more land under cultivation. Beyond the threshold limit, a one square kilometer increase in flooding would reduce the rice area coverage by 2 hectares. On the other hand, the production of rice would increase by 492 tons with a one square kilometer increase in flooding up to the threshold limit. However, the rice production would reduce by 70 tons if a one square kilometer increase flooding above the threshold limit. On top of that, both the rice area coverage and production showed increasing trends with the increase in flooding level in the last few years. The reasons behind this are- government supports, subsidies, incentives, and stress coping strategies towards accelerating national production to overcome the effects of the flood to sustain national food security; development of stress-tolerant and high yielding modern rice varieties by the research organizations; and replacing the local varieties with these modern varieties by the farmers and extension workers in Bangladesh. [J Bangladesh Agril Univ 2021; 19(2.000): 243-250]

This study was carried out to evaluate the performance of BRRI cultivars, identifying criteria and constraints as well as factors influencing the intensity of BRRI cultivars adoption in Aus season on the farm households in Mymensingh district. The data were collected through structured questionnaires from a total of 390 randomly selected rice farmers from thirteen Upazila of Mymensingh district. The study employed descriptive statistics and Tobit censored regression to determine the adoption and yield status; and adoption intensity determinants. In addition to a total of thirteen FGDs and expert panel interview was conducted to verify the collected data. The results show that 82.04 percent of the area in Mymensingh district was cultivated with rice variety developed by Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) with an average yield of 4.05 t/ha during the Aus season. The findings of the Tobit censored regression indicate that schooling, distance to the local market, training, price variation, taste and preference, amount of cultivated varieties, yield variability were the significant factors of the intensity of BRRI varieties adoption in Aus season. The study's results suggested that breeders should also emphasize the choice of farmers while developing varieties. In addition to developing new rice varieties, BRRI, Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), Bangladesh Agricultural Corporation (BADC) and other seed producing organizations need to work together to provide the farmers with good quality seeds of BRRI varieties, which will increase the total production of the country, thus helping to ensure food safety.

This comparative study was conducted within a selected coastal empoldered area (as saline area) and other selected non-saline districts of Bangladesh, during the period 2011-12 with a view to comparing the profitability and technical efficiency of T. Aman rice growers. The study revealed that T. Aman rice production was found profitable in both of saline and non-saline but the realistic favor the views that economic return is quite in non-saline areas. The returns per taka investment in both study areas were 1.75 and 1.82, respectively. The estimated result showed that the average level of technical efficiencies of the sample farmers were about 70.70% and 87.50% for the saline and non-saline farms, respectively implying that given the existing technology and level of inputs, the output could be increased by 29% and 12%, respectively. Farmer's education and training had positive significant effect on T. Aman rice production. The age of the sampled farmers' had significant positive impact on farming efficiency in the non-saline farms but it was negative on the saline area. The salinity had significant impact on the farming efficiency of T. Aman rice farmers'. The farmers of the non- saline areas were technically more efficient than the saline area which resulted higher net return from T. Aman rice farming. Keywords- Saline & non-saline areas, T. Aman rice, profitability and technical efficiency I. Introduction The arable land in Bangladesh is about 61 percent of the total land area. The total cultivated area was 8.03 million hectares in 2003 but it reduced to 7.73 million hectares in 2008 (BBS 2012) due to urbanization, industrialization and housing for increasing population. The decreasing trend of arable land requires intensive use of land to produce more food for the extra million future generations. Moreover, out of total cultivated areas, 2.75 million ha is single cropped, 3.92 million ha double cropped and 1.28 million ha triple cropped (BBS 2010). The economic development of Bangladesh is inextricably linked with the performance of Agricultural sector. Agriculture provides nearly about 48.1% of her labour forces (BBS 2011). This sector contributes about 20.24% (BBS 2011) to the GDP of the economy as a whole of which crop sector share is about 12%. Rice is the dominating crop sector of agriculture and the largest contributor to farm income of the majority of farm population. However, it is a vital source of non farm income related to trade and commerce of a large segment of the economy. Rice is the most strategic commodity in Bangladesh accounting for 70% calorie intake and about 35% of household expenditure. Out of 7.97 million ha cultivated area, about its 77% devoted to rice (Salam 2012). Rice is being grown in the three seasons namely, Aus, Aman and Boro covering 1.11, 5.65 and 4.77 million ha of land, respectively (BBS 2011). However, the country contains a large area considered as coastal area. The coastal area of Bangladesh represents an area of 47,211 km 2 , 32 percent of the country's geographical area, wherein 35 million people i.e. 28 percent of the country's total population live at 6.85 million households. In terms of administrative consideration, 19 districts out of 64 are considered as coastal district (http://equitybd.org/newsletter/english/Issue-5/Disaster_BD.pdf). Moreover, the coastal area is suffering from salinity problem for rice cultivation. The large farmers cultivated rice-cum-bagda pattern with the saline water. The productivity of rice is very much lower compare to the other areas of the country. Salinity is a problem for livestock's and forestry also. The marginal farmers' preferred cultivate rice to shrimp as there was alternative of fresh water golda with rice. But, they could not as the large farmers were devoted to shrimp culture with saline water. Realizing the negative impact of saline water on environment and society, people as well as the government recently restricted the intrusion of saline water into the empoldered areas. As rice takes the monopoly position in the staple food items of the country and salinity has great impact on rice production and environment, the people of the polder 31 of Khulna district banned the intrusion of saline water and brought more land under the cultivation of T. Aman rice through rice-cum-golda pattern instead of rice-cum-bagda. Due to the restriction of saline water intrusion the soil salinity decreased from previous level (from 29.57 ds/m to 22.06 ds/m). But the land is not free from the salinity effect. The salinity of the concerned area was higher than