28 new rice varieties released in 2014 as scientists ensure responsive breeding for the future

The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and its partners released at least twenty-eight new rice varieties to governments of eight countries in Asia and Africa in 2014.

These newly-released varieties possess high-yielding and stress-tolerance traits that can help farmers overcome challenges, such as the negative effects of climate change, in their rice growing ecosystems. Some of the varieties released are flood-tolerant (India), drought-tolerant for rainfed rice areas (Nepal), and salinity-tolerant (the Gambia and the Philippines).

IRRI has released more than a thousand modern rice varieties in 78 countries since its founding in 1960.

"The work never stops," said Eero Nissila, IRRI's head of breeding and leader of its global rice research partnership in varietal improvement. "New challenges arise due to climate change and decreasing resources, which is why we need to keep revisiting our agenda and stay responsive to the needs of our farmers and consumers."

Scientists implementing IRRI’s breeding agenda are sharing the latest in their varietal improvement work during IRRI Breeders' Week, happening now at IRRI, 23-27 March 2015.

Critical improvements are being made to IRRI’s breeding infrastructure, which needs to be more responsive to the requirements of current and future rice demand. Responsiveness requires increasing rice genetic gain in yield and pursuing an agenda that’s driven by what consumers need and prefer. Taken together, these improvements are called Transforming Rice Breeding (TRB), funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

At Breeders' Week, several updates were presented, which include development of profiles of rice preferred in selected countries in Southeast Asia and Africa; market research on types of rice consumers prefer; updates on the irrigated variety development pipeline that now benefits from an expedited breeding process; breeding hubs in Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia; grain quality and how it integrates into the development of high-yielding rice varieties with desirable traits; managing information through bioinformatics; genotyping services; partnerships within the hybrid rice development program; and exploration of rice's diversity for breeding.

IRRI is part of the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP), a platform for impact-oriented rice research for development with more than 900 rice research and development partners worldwide.

Learn more about IRRI (www.irri.org) or follow us on the social media and networks (all links down the right column).

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.

Learn more about IRRI (www.irri.org) or follow us on the social media and networks (all links down the right column).