BATON ROUGE -- The LSU AgCenter says it has one of the most renowned rice breeding programs in the world. A reason they've been able to expand their program is a recent collaboration with Loveland Products, Inc.

This seven-year partnership between the AgCenter and Loveland Products, Inc. has contributed financially to the AgCenter's rice breeding program. The AgCenter says this partnership has allowed them to release new commercial varieties of rice that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to.

"Working with them and their expertise, the other is financial contributions that help us fund and grow our program and the third is germplasm. So we have access to some of their material and they have access to our material," LSU AgCenter H. Rouse Caffey Rice Research Center Director Adam Famoso said.

The AgCenter's rice breeding program has been around for over 100 years.

"The program is focused on developing new and improved rice varieties that will increase the profitability and sustainability of our rice industry and our rice farmers in Louisiana," Famoso said.

The hope is to increase the yield and quality of each rice variety.

"To ensure that we improve those attributes, there are a lot of other key traits like disease resistance, insect tolerance, and herbicide tolerance that go into it," Famoso said.

The breeding program has seen tremendous growth over the years, especially with each new rice variety.

"The varieties that we had 10 years ago, they'll probably yield about 10 percent less than the varieties we have today, even the overall farmer's field yields have not necessarily gone up," Famoso said.

It's not genetic modification in the way that people would think. Famoso says it's similar to how people choose how dogs are bred and the process of selecting the best.

"It is a genetic modification in that we're crossing things, and then we're selecting the best progeny," Famoso said.

A typical breeding cycle typically takes around eight years.

"From the time we start and cross two parents, to the time we would release a variety to the farmers, is typically around eight years," Famoso said.

Famoso says we're at a point where most of the rice has been planted. Farmers are flooding the crop fields, fertilizing and letting the rice grow, while monitoring any potential disease. They'll drain the fields sometime around July.

Loveland Products, Inc. has been a big help to the breeding program in the last several years, especially through the sharing of Germplasm.

"So Germplasm is a term we use in breeding. So it's a different line. It's just a rice line that has certain desirable attributes and we would use that different germplasm to cross one another to create new germplasm," Famoso said.

The partnership with Loveland Products, Inc. has also allowed the LSU AgCenter to launch impactful grant writing initiatives and has given them support for early-stage research projects.