Even as Indonesia is trying to focus on high-yielding hybrid seeds in order to increase output, experts believe that the country's goal of attaining self-sufficiency in rice by the year 2009 may prove to be a little too ambitious as the plan faces many hurdles.

Indonesia needs to achieve an annual production growth of 5% to reach its self-sufficiency goal and the country is hoping the Chinese hybrid seeds it is banking on will deliver that. However reports suggest that farmers who used the Chinese hybrid seeds were disappointed with the results and are switching back to inbred seeds.

Indonesia has 12 million hectares of land under rice cultivation. With global rice prices soaring, Indonesia, one of the world's largest consumers of the grain, desperately wants to become self-sufficient in rice production.