Jeff Belding

RiceTec, which sold its first hybrid-rice seeds in 2000, has been expanding its seed acreage ever since to meet burgeoning demand, said Jeff Belding, RiceTec's northern region production manager.

Belding, based in Jonesboro, and a Texas counterpart are responsible each year for contracting with farmers to produce hybrid-rice seed that can be sold for commercial rice production in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas.
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Their task is to create just enough "rotor wash" to blow pollen from narrow strips of maleparent plants to wider strips of male-sterile or female plants, which will produce the hybrid seed, Belding explained.Skimming over the fields at 34 mph, the small helicopters - 13 Robinson R22s, two Schweitzers and one Bell - don't create enough draft to either force the pollen to the ground or damage the plants by blowing them over, he said.
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Belding said the first helicopters began flying Aug. 2 and he hopes to complete this year's pollination by the end of the month.

To simplify its work, RiceTec contracts for the use of only precision-leveled fields, with levees that run in straight, parallel lines, Belding said.As part of its quality-control program, the company also requires that its seed acreage be subject to a strict rotation - one year of RiceTec seed rice, followed by two years of other crops, usually soybeans, corn or sorghum.

Orchestrating cross pollination can be particularly challenging if unfavorable weather conditions intervene, so Rice-Tec uses its own equipment to plant each year's seed crop, Belding said.The alternating strips of male and female plants often must be planted on different dates to ensure that they reach sexual maturity at the same time, he said.And the female strips require aerial applications of growth hormone to prod their development.

Helicopter-induced pollination is a calculated gamble, said Belding, who declined to reveal the yield in RiceTec's seed fields, admitting only that it is "well below" the yield that those seeds will produce commercially the following year.