Conventionally, farmers across Pakistan cultivate rice by sowing seeds within nurseries, and then transplanting the seedlings into the puddled soil of the paddy fields. However, this approach requires large amounts of water, as well as labour and fuel. Also, in some areas, rice grown by traditional methods contains high levels of arsenic due to contamination from deep-well irrigated water.This is a serious issue for Nestlé Pakistan, which uses rice in its products. Working with the University of Agriculture in Faisalabad, we ran a six-month field trial to test the direct seeding of rice, rather than the traditional two-step approach.Twelve of the most popular varieties of rice were sown under normal moisture conditions rather than in puddled soil.The results highlighted a number of benefits. Water use was cut by up to 50%, arsenic residues were down by more than 65%, and much less labour was required to nurture the seeds. Even tractor use was halved, helping reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, and the directly seeded plants took two weeks fewer to grow.Given the encouraging results, we will be collaborating with our suppliers to promote this new method of farming, to ensure we can continue to provide consumers with the best rice possible. We will also conduct further field trials at different locations across the Punjab to continue to evaluate the suitability of the direct seeding method, and investigate variances in arsenic residues across different varieties of rice.

Project Results