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The consortium meets yearly to review research progress on key issues affecting temperate rice and to plan the most effective use of their resources. Holding this year’s meeting at IRRI provided a good opportunity for members to hear from IRRI scientists on issues affecting temperate rice areas, such as phenotyping, GIS mapping, hybrids, germplasm exchange, and marketing.
The meeting was attended by more than 50 participants from 18 countries.
Robert Zeigler, IRRI director general, noted in his opening message that while IRRI’s focus went naturally toward rice in the tropics, temperate (japonica) rice accounts for about 10% of the global rice area and features as a product pipeline under the Global Rice Science Partnership or GRiSP. He acknowledged that technology advances in rice genomics and studies of multiple traits provide opportunities to make materials and tools available in temperate areas.
Dr. Zeigler encouraged the consortium to ensure that research programs are closely aligned to consumer demand, and to embrace new challenges such as nutritional value, grain quality, and tolerance to temperature extremes (both heat and cold) during growth, which will become increasingly necessary.
The previous (2012) meeting was hosted by the Trakya Agricultural Research Institute at Edirne, Turkey, where its director Necmi Beser was elected chair. Presiding at this year’s meeting, Dr. Beser thanked the Rural Development Administration of Korea and IRRI for establishing and supporting TRRC.
In 2014, the TRRC meeting will be integrated with the 4th International Rice Congress (IRC2014) and the 5th International Temperate Rice Conference (TRC5) scheduled 27-31 October in Bangkok, Thailand.
More information is available at http://irc2014science.wordpress.com.
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