Abstract

Rice is vital food for more than half of the worlds population. It is most important food grain in the diets of hundreds of millions of Asians, Africans and Latin Americans living in the tropics and sub-tropics. In these areas population increase will likely to remain high atleast for the next decade. Rice will continue to be their primary source of food. Since the availability of land for rice cultivation remains static or in many cases dwindling rapidly due to encroachment of cultivable areas for industrial purposes etc., every effort should be made to increase the productivity of rice per unit land area to feed the ever increasing population in this part of the world. Rice scientists all over the world are engaged in evolving new high yielding varieties and management practices to increase the productivity per unit land area per unit time. The productivity of rice depends on various physiological, biochemical and molecular events that occur at different growth stages. Regulation of these parameters is one of the ways to increase the productivity. With this background an attempt has been made to review all the methods, technologies and suggestions to increase the productivity of rice.