Second phase of global research partnership for strengthening rice production worldwide kicks off

RICE Independent Steering Committee

LOS BAÑOS, Philippines—Around 40 scientists from major partner institutions participated in the kickoff meeting for the CGIAR Research Program on rice agri-food systems (RICE) at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) headquarters on 6-8 March. RICE, the second phase of the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP), provides a single strategic plan and unique new partnership platform for impact-oriented rice research for development. It streamlines current rice research for development activities of the CGIAR and aligns them with more than 900 rice research and development partners worldwide.

Scientists from the Africa Rice Center, International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (Cirad),  Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD),  Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences as well as representatives from the CG System Management Office attended the RICE inception workshop. Along with IRRI scientists, the participants conducted a detailed planning of the 2017 activities under the flagship projects. They also reviewed the theory of change, updated the list of outputs and outcome milestones, and discussed several cross-cutting issues such as gender; capacity development; monitoring, evaluation,  learning (ML&E); impact assessment; communication; open access; publications; cross-CRP collaboration/site integration; and intellectual asset management.

The RICE Program Planning and Management Team, represented by deputy director generals and senior scientists from the partner centers and the flagship project leaders also discussed budgetary and operational issues. On 9-10 March, the RICE Independent Steering Committee (ISC) convened to review the GRiSP experience and the terms of reference of the new ISC.  The ISC is composed of seven external experts; representatives from the respective Board of Trustees of IRRI, AfricaRice, and CIAT; and the director generals of IRRI and AfricaRice. The committee assessed the targets, indicators, milestones, and budget of the flagship projects and cross-cutting activities. The ISC will formulate recommendations and continue to monitor activities under RICE.

For more information about RICE, please read Continuing global partnership through rice.

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Next phase of GRiSP is focus of 2015 meeting of Asia rice research body

Dr. Mat Syukur, assistant to the Minister of Agriculture for Innovation and Technology, strikes the gong to ceremonially open the CORRA event as IRRI DDG-R Dr. Matthew Morell and IAARD Executive Secretary Dr. Agung Hendriadi look on. 

Bekasi, Indonesia – Leaders and representatives of national agricultural research institutions from 18 Asian countries gathered for the 19th annual meeting of the Council for Partnerships on Rice Research in Asia (CORRA) to discuss the second phase of the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP). Participants also examined the relevance of GRiSP to the national rice research and development priorities of member countries and the national rice programs of member countries Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

The event concluded with a formal declaration of CORRA’s support for GRiSP Phase 2. The declaration also included a pledge to promote the development of the next generation of rice scientists by encouraging national governments through the ministries of agriculture to fund relevant international programs.

The meeting was chaired by Dr. Agung Hendriadi, executive secretary of Indonesian Agency for Agricultural Research and Development (IAARD). IRRI was represented by Dr. Matthew Morell, deputy director general for research, who also co-chaired the meeting.

CORRA is composed of heads of national research institutions from Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, India, Japan, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam, plus IRRI. IRRI is also the secretariat of CORRA.

This year’s meeting was held on 3-4 August in Bekasi, Indonesia and hosted by IAARD.

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Global research partners chart the path of GRiSP 2 and the next-generation CGIAR rice program

Representatives from CGIAR Centers and other international R&D agencies are planning the second phase of the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP), which is a single strategic and work plan for global rice research. Participants from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Africa Rice Center, International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Agricultural Research for Development (Cirad), and Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) are drafting a pre-proposal for a six-year CGIAR Research Program (CRP) on rice agri-food systems. The pre-proposal will be part of the new CRP portfolio from 2017 to 2022.

The new CRP portfolio is structured around 8 agri-food systems CRP, 4 global integrative CRPs, and 1 Genebank CRP. The agri-food system CRPs address major food commodity value chains, (maize, rice, wheat, grain legumes and dryland cereals, roots-tubers-bananas, fish, livestock, and trees and agroforestry) and adopt an integrated, agricultural systems approach to advancing productivity, sustainability, nutrition, and resilience outcomes at scale. The specific goal of the rice agri-food CRP is to reduce poverty and hunger, improve human health and nutrition, reduce the environmental footprint, and enhance ecosystem resilience of rice-based farming systems.

It aims to achieve its goals through high quality, impact-oriented global and regional research and development activities. The key entry point for achieving these goals is the substantial value addition and increase in the productivity and resource efficiency along the rice value chain. Novel elements of the program include a holistic value-chain approach, a livelihood approach that focuses on whole farm systems, more attention to gender equity and opportunities for youth employment, and utilizing new scientific opportunities, such as Big Data and new genomics.

The rice agri-food CRP will follow up on GRiSP, the current research program on rice funded by the CGIAR for 2010-2016, which consists of over 900 partners from the public, private, and civic society sectors. In addition to the rice agri-food CRP, CGIAR centers and other GRiSP partners will contribute directly to GRiSP through complementary projects and activities.

The GRiSP Writing Workshop is currently being held at the IRRI headquarters from 10-19 June.

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The International Rice Genebank: a galaxy of rice traits awaits full exploration

LOS BAÑOS, Philippines - The International Rice Genebank housed at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is a virtual universe that contains most traits rice breeders need, according to Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton, an evolutionary biologist who provides scientific leadership in the genetic conservation of rice.

“The diversity in the Genebank is massive,” Dr. Sackville Hamilton said during his presentation at the recently concluded IRRI-Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP) Asia Science Week, held here from 26 to 30 January. “There is diversity for almost every conceivable trait, almost every conceivable development objective,” he added.

Case in point: early-flowering rice.

Increasing average daytime temperatures is one way climate change is affecting rice production. Rice scientists at IRRI have determined that extremely higher temperatures, particularly during the flowering stage, are associated with lower yields. In most rice varieties, the peak of flowering takes place between 09:30 and 11:30 in the morning when the temperature is well on its way up. Even an hour’s exposure to heat stress at this time can be sufficient to induce sterility— and temperatures above 36°C can cause inadequate pollination resulting in empty panicles.

One proposed solution for this problem was developing rice varieties that flower earlier in the day when temperatures are cooler. “Everyone said there was no early-flowering trait in rice,” Dr. Sackville Hamilton said. “But Greg Howell, former IRRI plant physiologist, and his team found it.”

Ironically, the Genebank’s strength—the genetic diversity it holds—also presents some challenges. “The problem we face is the huge amount of diversity that we have in the Genebank,” he said. “We don’t know which accessions contain the genes breeders need, and finding them is often difficult.”

Screening this vast collection for particular traits is very labor intensive. Finding the desired trait isn’t as straightforward as looking for a needle in a haystack. That would be easy. It’s really more like looking for a needle that may not even be in a haystack. Or looking for a needle in a haystack of objects that look pretty much like needles. Dr. Howell and his team painstakingly combed through 4,200 domesticated and wild rice types at the Genebank, spending numerous hours observing the samples, and found the early-flowering trait in 590 accessions.

Currently, the Genebank provides breeders with many accessions to evaluate. But usually they can only afford what Dr. Sackville Hamilton calls a “quick and dirty” phenotypic screening. “It is not surprising that very few accessions get past the breeders’ initial screen,” Dr. Sackville Hamilton said. “We have been distributing 30,000 to 40,000 samples a year for evaluation since 1985. About 85% of the accessions (types of rice) have been evaluated at least once, but only about 5% have actually been incorporated into breeding programs."

“In the future we need to work on building the system to estimate breeding value from genotype, and then we will be able to feed more detailed knowledge to the breeders,” he said.

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Regional agreement results in faster release of rice varieties

LOS BAÑOS, Philippines - An unprecedented regional seed cooperation agreement, involving India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, is speeding up the release and dissemination of rice varieties to benefit farmers in the region. The agreement is a result of discussions among officials of the three countries, convened by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) through the Stress-Tolerant Rice for Africa and South Asia (STRASA) project.

“The regional cooperation system is the most suitable platform for India, Bangladesh, and Nepal because they share similar agroecologies and borders,” Abdelbagi Ismail said during his presentation at the recently concluded IRRI-Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP) Asia Science Week, held here from 26 to 30 January.

“With this seed cooperation system, a rice variety that is tested, approved, and released in one country can also be released simultaneously in another, provided that they have the same agroclimatic conditions,” said Abdelbagi Ismail, principal scientist at IRRI and leader of the STRASA project.

The regional seed cooperation saves a lot of resources and shortens the time required for a variety to be released in one country. If a country released the same variety released in another country, it will save a significant amount of time required in the breeding process. Varieties developed through marker-assisted breeding takes 2 years while it takes 7 years or more for varieties developed through conventional breeding.

 “In fact, several varieties released in one country are already popular in another. For example, BR11, BRRI dhan 28, and BRRI dhan 29, modern high-yielding rice varieties released in Bangladesh, are now widely grown in eastern India,” he reported.

Indian varieties are currently estimated to be planted in more than 21% of the rice area in Bangladesh. Some Indian rice varieties such as Swarna, Sarju 52, and Samba Mahsuri are now popular in Nepal.

According to Dr. Ismail, agreement on regional seed cooperation was reached because these three countries have well-established research and rice varietal development programs. Moreover, they share similar guidelines for varietal evaluation and release.

The Indian government is taking the initiative to implement the regional cooperation agreement. Several varieties released in Bangladesh such as BINA dhan 8, BINA dhan 10, BINA dhan 11, and  BINA dhan 12 are in the queue to be released in the states of West Bengal, Assam, and Odisha in India. These varieties will be evaluated for release in other states also, but only for a year.

Sukha dhan5 and Sukha dhan6, drought-tolerant varieties released in Nepal, are being considered for release in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

The good news is that, the Department of Agriculture of India allotted 30% of its funds to programs such as National Food Security Mission NFSM) and Bringing the Green Revolution to Eastern India (BGREI) to further promote climate-smart rice developed by STRASA starting this year.


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Gender research aims to mainstream women in agriculture

LOS BANOS, Philippines - The gender research team of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is extensively working to mainstream women as the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP) implements its gender components.

Projects under GRiSP are aiming to reduce gender inequality and gaps through the use of gender-responsive technology and tools, outreach, training, and gender-disaggregated (separately collected from men and women) data. While doing this, the gender research team gathered a few success stories to tell from farm mechanization efforts in India.

Women introduced mechanized farming in Bihar in Eastern India with the help of gender specialists at IRRI. Encouraged and assisted by the IRRI gender team, the women members of a self-help group put their savings and a generous government subsidy together and became proud owners of a mechanical rice transplanter.

The initiative was carried out through a pilot project under the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) in Bihar, one of the least-developed states in India, with the lowest agricultural productivity and the highest incidence of poverty.

Also in Eastern India, women have come to the heart of technology delivery in the remote tribal villages of Odisha. In 2013, as part of its commitment to mainstreaming gender, IRRI started engaging local partners, such as Pradan and the Dhan Foundation and other such organizations, to help women in Mayurbhanj District, also under CSISA. Their cumulative efforts have changed the technology delivery model for the district.

IRRI’s gender team was also responsible for women empowerment through access to seeds and seed management training in Eastern India and Bangladesh.

These efforts have been successful in, for instance, identifying a standard and comprehensive set of domains to measure women empowerment in agriculture. However, gender mainstreaming also faces challenges, which mainly have to do with household structure and gender norms; difficulty in collecting sex-disaggregated information about assets, income, and expenditure; prolonged survey and difficulties in involving or even interviewing women due to time constraints, information gaps, and religious and cultural constraints.

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Sub-Saharan rice farming countries benefit from season-long training

LOS BAÑOS, Philippines-The Season-Long Rice Farming Program for extension agronomists in Sub-Saharan countries has been a success, reported Lea Abaoag, head of the Technology Management and Services Division of the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) on 29 January 2015 during the IRRI-GRiSP Asia Science Week.

Felix Oteng, one of the five training graduates from Ghana in 2012, is a living testimony of this success. He has used his knowledge in training his co-extension workers in his country. In December 2014, he was awarded as the Northern Regional Best Agricultural Extension Officer during the National Farmer’s Day celebration.

“I have really seen the impact of the course and I can say that more good things are yet to happen, ” he said.

Not popularly known as a rice region, Africa is in fact an important rice producer and consumer. Rice is the fastest growing food staple in the region. For instance, Ghana’s rice consumption continues to increase with the country’s population growth, urbanization, and changing consumer preferences. From 22.8 kg per year in 2005, the country's per capita consumption jumped to 34.2 kg per year in 2011. However, the country’s rice self-sufficiency ratio is only about 30%, leaving a 70% shortfall. Currently, Ghana spends about US$450 million each year on rice imports to meet its local demand.

"Improving rice production in Africa is critical in meeting the region’s future demand for rice,” said Dr. Noel Magor, head of IRRI’s Training Center. “Training young Africans in all aspects of rice production, for them to be updated of the latest and most useful information and to build their professional networks, will empower them to play an active role in developing environmentally sustainable rice production in their countries,” he added.

The Program is a collaboration among the Japan International Cooperation Agency, International Rice Research Institute, and PhilRice under the Coalition for Africa Rice Development (CARD). The project aims for greater, sustainable harvest of quality rice for Africa by demonstrating that the using up-to-date rice farming practices will result in increased food security and improved livelihoods for rice farmers, their families, and their communities.

The training targeted extension officers, junior researchers, and research technicians in rice research and development. Ms. Abaoag, who is also the overall coordinator of the season-long rice farming training program, said that the African extension agronomists were trained on PalayCheck and Palayamanan systems at the PhilRice Central Experiment Station in Nueva Ecija. PalayCheck is an integrated crop management system for rice while Palayamanan is a diversified rice-based farming system.

The Program started in 2011 and completed in 2013 with a total of 63 extension agronomists who learned the benefits of an effective extension service in the delivery of up-to-date technologies to farmers. It was a 17-week course at PhilRice and a two-week course at IRRI.

This training program is an important milestone in the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP) and is part of the joint effort by the Africa Rice Center and IRRI to support rice sector development in Africa.

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IRRI expert talks about moving seed systems forward

Last January 29 at the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP) science week, Dr. Abdelbagi Ismail, principal scientist and coordinator of the Stress-Tolerant Rice for Africa and South Asia (STRASA) project, explained how important it was to facilitate seed systems, especially when it comes to multiplying and disseminating seeds—considered a prime product of the Institute—more widely for impact.

He said IRRI needs to engage in the seed business because it strengthens trust with partners and can be an entry point for influencing policies across the seed chain or value chain. It can also generate additional resources from national programs or donors, can engage public-private partnerships, and ensure fast delivery or impact, among others.

To facilitate the development of these seed systems, he explained that proper seed partners in the value chain must be aligned in order to facilitate multiplication and dissemination of the seeds. The capacity of the public and private sector partners should also be strengthened and strategic dialogues must be made to ensure enabling policies. Programs on awareness should also be launched to speed up seed uptake, and additional financial resources must be mobilized.

He emphasized in the latter that to ensure ownership of national programs, project objectives must be aligned with a country's priorities and that linkages must be made with national schemes or initiatives for similar goals. The same case can also apply to international initiatives. Networking with diverse partners along the seed chain from production to farmers is also another option. STRASA currently has 570 partners in this regard.

Since much interest has also come from the private sector in the production and marketing of seeds of inbred stress-tolerant rice varieties, this is also another option that can be considered. Currently, STRASA has involved about 350 small and medium private seed producers and over 15 large public and private seed companies and corporations.

In terms of regional collaboration, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and IRRI signed two separate agreements on 2013 and 2014, respectively, where they agreed to jointly share evaluation and release of new rice varieties. Such policy breakthroughs are important, explained Dr. Ismail, since they not only help to fast-track the dissemination of seeds, but also allow IRRI to share costs or resources.
Dr. Joel Janiya, an expert in the Consortium for Unfavorable Rice Environments (CURE), explained on the one hand that the primary driving force behind the development of seed systems or the uptake of seeds at the community level are women. In fact, women have been playing an increasingly important role in almost all facets of rice farming.

According to him, the way forward for community seeds and women are to continually identify gender-sensitive technologies and to develop a system for assessing farm-level effects on the use of technologies, risk reduction, productivity gains, and value addition. Up-scaling and out-scaling strategies should also be linked with local, regional, or national programs in the same way that technical information services can be linked with non-government organizations, the private sector, and other delivery mechanisms that benefit both men and women.

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South Asian challenges and opportunities identified in GRiSP session

Jagdish K. Ladha, IRRI representative for India, presented last January 29 at the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP) Science Week, the phase 3 of India's work plan—which runs from 2013-16—and has a total of 24 projects. Seven of these are implemented at the IRRI HQ, while 10 are operating in India. He stressed that the ideal engagement would be a model in which partners are working together for the same objective when collaborating. Matthew Morrell, deputy director general for research, underscored that creating or finding the right collaboration model is important as it is relevant for other countries so finding or creating the right model is crucial.

Dr. Ladha also presented their future strategy based on a meeting with IRRI Indian scientists last January 19. This included their priority in terms of rice ecology, crop establishment, variety, and agronomic practices. Under rice ecology, they would focus on rainfed and irrigated areas as well as those that provide opportunities for rice-fallow or aerobic systems. On crop establishment, the focus is on direct seeding and mechanized transplanting, which is becoming highly popular in south India because of increasing labor costs and shortages. In terms of variety, there have been areas experiencing lower amount of sunlight so rice varieties that are specially adapted to low-light conditions need to be developed. Also, shorter-duration varieties, which can easily fit into many cropping systems, are needed. When it comes to agronomy, Dr. Ladha explained that the focus should be on systems agronomy; on intensification and diversification; on identifying best management practices for key ecologies; and maximizing the yield potential from a best mix of agronomic practices and varieties.

Priority regions in India include its eastern, southern, and southwestern parts. Although there are many challenges such as competing demands, bureaucratic delays, high expectations, and reluctance to sign outside the existing work plan, there are also opportunities to co-lead certain research areas based on comparative advantage; to co-invest by aligning own R&D priorities and activities with GRiSP for greater synergy; and to mobilize additional national resources for upstream research areas.

Bangladesh is also similar to India which presents several challenges and opportunities. According to Dr. Paul Fox, IRRI representative for Bangladesh, farm sizes have been increasingly getting smaller, but surprisingly there's been a reverse trend in land tenancy, which has gone up in much recent years. Other challenges which can also be seen as opportunities include managing crops in saline rice-based systems on monsoonal deltas; increasing water-use efficiency in northwest Bangladesh during the aman and boro rice cropping seasons; coastal community water management; and mechanization and weed problems; among others.

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IRRI breeding steps up for future of rice

LOS BAÑOS, Philippines - Enabling current and future rice systems to produce rice needed to feed the world by 2035 fuels the breeding agenda of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). Innovations toward this overarching goal were discussed during the IRRI-Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP) Science Week held at IRRI on 26-30 January 2015.

To enable rice systems to produce more yield, IRRI and its global research partners under GRiSP set themselves up in an approach that not only makes for efficient development of rice varieties but also for an informed breeding agenda, by which breeders know what the farmers and the market need.

A key product to help increase rice yields is hybrid rice, research for which is done within the Hybrid Rice Development Consortium.

Research is also ongoing to improve what are considered 'mega-varieties,' or rice varieties that have been grown on at least 2 million hectares. Examples of these mega-varieties are Swarna, Samba Mahsuri, Ciherang, and IR64.

An important pipeline in the development of new rice varieties is trait development. Trait development research involves looking for genes that provide rice, e.g., resistance to pests and disease or tolerance for environmental stresses such as flooding, deep water, drought, salinity, high temperature, and low phosphorus intake.

Trait development is one of the major strengths of IRRI’s breeding program. IRRI's breeding programs itself have been steadily incorporating new genes, technologies and has been moving forward from conventional breeding to more accurate and predictive breeding.

IRRI has also started decentralizing its breeding operations by establishing two breeding hubs that represent the regional context of the areas in which they are located. These are breeding hubs located in Bujumpura, Burundi, and Hyderabad, India. Another one is being set-up in Myanmar. Myanmar is located at the junction of South Asia and Southeast Asia.

The hub approach is seen as an effective way to advise targeted breeding for a specific market segment. They also help in better execution of ecosystem based breeding with main variables being environmental features, which are variable from country to another.

In 2014, IRRI’s breeding division overhauled its operations to set up an improved mechanism to help increase the rate of genetic gain in rice yield. Experts say that this is an important premise to meeting the projected demand in 2035 of an additional 180 million metric tons over current global production.

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Young scientists' work featured in Asian rice research meet

LOS BAÑOS, LAGUNA  - The recently concluded Asia Science Week at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) featured the work of 18 promising scientists in the early stages of their careers. The young rice scientists (YRS), 17 post-doctoral fellows and 1 PhD candidate, presented their research covering a range of topics including crop improvement, reducing post-harvest grain loss, environment and sustainability, genetics and genomics; innovations and novel approaches; and plant breeding. 

Broad agreement among Asian countries on rice research agenda

(Photo by T Lambino)

By Benedict Pamatmat and Leah Baroña-Cruz

BANGKOK, Thailand, 31 October 2014 - Senior agriculture officials of several Asian countries said that the research program of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) aligns well with their national priorities.

This is an important affirmation of IRRI’s research agenda, implemented under the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP). “IRRI considers this forum incredibly important in helping the Institute frame and prioritize what it does,” said Matthew Morell, deputy director general for research at IRRI. “It is a very important multilateral conversation for us to engage in.”

Incoming GRiSP director is guest in researchers' lunch

Bas Bouman, new director of the Global Rice Science Partnership (center).

Bas Bouman, head of IRRI's Crop and Environmental Sciences Division and newly named director of the Global Rice Science Partnership or GRiSP, was the guest scientist during the Young Researchers Lunch for August.

Participants were Balwinder Singh, Nikos Tsakirpaloglou, Sharifa Sultana Dipti, Yam Kanta Gaihre, Annette Tobias, and Elenor de Leon.

Dr. Bouman discussed his own career path with the participants, which he said was always determined by taking the best opportunities that came up and not by following a set plan. He parted with the young researchers with this tip: "If someone asks you where your career is headed in the next 10-15 years, it's okay if you don't give them an answer."

The Young Researchers Lunch is a monthly meeting for NRS and AFSTRI scientists who are in the early stages of their career. The purpose is to provide an opportunity for discussions with senior scientists on a range of topics including science and career paths.

For more information, please contact Joy Sagabay (M.Sagabay@cgiar.org) or Amelia Henry (A.Henry@cgiar.org).


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