Kathmandu, June 29 :

The Second National Rice Day was observed with the minister for agriculture and cooperatives planting paddy at Uttargaya in Gokarneswor VDC-7 today.

As many as 350 people, including the secretary and joint secretaries of the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MoAC), officials of the agriculture office, local farmers and women, participated in the function organised by the Department of Agriculture.

Addressing the celebrations, minister Mahantha Thakur hailed the importance of rice cultivation and said production of rice should be increased by adopting advanced technologies.

The UN had declared 2004 as the International Year of Rice while the Nepal government had decided to celebrate Ashad 15 of the Nepali calendar as the National Rice Day.

Nepal Agriculture Research Council (NARC) also celebrated Ashad 15 by planting paddy in the field of the Agronomy Division of the NARC at Khumaltar.

According to Bhola Man Singh Basnet, spokesperson of the NARC, 54 different varieties of rice have been released for cultivation in the past four decades and that improved variety of rice cover some 85 per cent of the total area of rice cultivation in Nepal.

According to the latest report of the NARC, paddy is cultivated in as much as 1550,000 hectares of land and the production reaches to 4.2 million metric tonnes.

Basnet also said Asia contributes 90 per cent of the total rice production and also consumes as many per cent, while it is the main crop for more than 50 per cent of the world population.