IBM and U.S. Peace Corps work with IRRI to strengthen its technical capacities

LOS BAÑOS, Philippines—IBM and U.S. Peace Corps volunteers recently worked hand-in-hand with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to further strengthen the institute’s effectiveness in securing global food security. Their recommendations for achieving the improvements were presented at the closing rites of IBM’s Corporate Service Corps (CSC) program at IRRI headquarters on 21 July.

The 15 CSC volunteers from the U.S., Brazil, South Africa, Slovakia, Italy, Spain, Mexico, the Netherlands, and India arrived in June to collaborate with their counterparts at IRRI in developing blueprints for four different sectors.  A parallel program was also conducted at the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA).

The teams at IRRI presented strategic plans for transitioning the institute’s library resources into a virtual, fully digitized, and network-based facility; providing data storage and computing infrastructure to meet the institute's processing needs; developing a “one-stop shop” where IRRI staff members could update country dossiers using existing resources with minimal manual input; and transforming IRRI's Training Center into a world-class Rice Science Academy (IRRI RSA).

“As global scientists, we here at IRRI often think that we are the only ones who can solve the problems,” said Bruce Tolentino, IRRI deputy director general for communication and partnerships. “But that’s not the case. IRRI requires a lot of collaboration and a lot of potent, fresh minds to solve the problems. Working with them has been a valuable experience.”

Corinta Guerta, IRRI director for external relations, agreed. “IRRI and IBM have been interacting with each other since the late 1970’s,” she said. “But this is the first time we’ve worked with them under their CSC program. We’re very fortunate that we were selected.”

“At the beginning, we thought that this would be quite risky,” Dr. Tolentino said. “Why bring in a set of people who don’t know anything about rice research to solve our problems? But it turned out to be good.”

“The CSC teams approached some of our challenges using tools they had and provided potential solutions,” he added. ”If you try to value the amount of time the team spent at IRRI and translated it monetarily—it’s a huge amount and we need to see it for that value. We hope that it pays off for all of us here.”

CSC is IBM’s pro bono consulting program, which was created in 2008 to help solve some of the most challenging problems in communities around the world while providing top-performing IBM employees with unique leadership development. IBM’s CSC at IRRI and SEARCA was conducted in cooperation with the U.S. Peace Corps and PYXERA Global.

“I do want it to demonstrate how serious IBM’s commitment is to social responsibility,” said Richard Chang, one of the CSC members. “We were chosen from thousands of volunteers but we also chose this because we wanted to give back.”

(This news item was written by Dan Christian M. Marinay, IRRI intern.)

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U.S. Peace Corps and IBM collaborate to benefit Los Baños science community

MANILA, Philippines—Three Peace Corps Response (PCR) volunteers were sworn in recently by U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg at the Peace Corps Office in Manila.

Ambassador Philip Goldberg (6th from left) joined by IBM-PCR volunteer Melody Balcet (6th from the right), Peace Corps Country Director Jean Seigle (5th from the right), IRRI Director for External Relations Corinta Guerta (5th from the left), IBM President and Country General Manager Luis Pineda (4th from right) and the rest of the IBM and IRRI executives.

One of the volunteers, Melody L. Balcet, an  IBM employee, will work for three months with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), the world’s premier international research organization dedicated to reducing poverty and hunger, improving the health and welfare of rice farmers and consumers, and protecting the rice-growing environment for future generations through rice science.

The volunteer will serve as an institutional strengthening specialist to help build the capacity of IRRI’s voluminous research information assets through digitization, big data analytics, and cloud computing, among other IT transformation strategies.

She will also be working as part of a team that is serving the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA), a nonprofit research and training center mandated to strengthen institutional capacities in agricultural and rural development in Southeast Asia. IRRI and SEARCA have been active member agencies of the Los Baños Science Community for many years.  

Launched in December 2015, the Peace Corps Response program is part of the innovative public-private partnership between Peace Corps and IBM. The partnership allows highly skilled IBM corporate professionals to serve overseas in short-term, high-impact pro bono consulting assignments.

The volunteer will serve alongside a 14-member IBM Corporate Service Corps (CSC) team of IBM employees from the U.S., Brazil, South Africa, Slovakia, Italy, Spain, Mexico, the Netherlands, and India that will arrive in July 2016 to serve the country for one month. The CSC is IBM’s pro bono consulting program, which was created in 2008, to help solve some of the most challenging problems in communities around the world while providing IBM employees with unique leadership development.

IBM employees spend four weeks in groups of 10 to 15 working collaboratively with their host government and community counterparts to develop blueprints that address issues such as economic development, energy and transportation, education, and healthcare.

PYXERA Global, an international NGO, which specializes in pro bono programs and one of IBM’s global implementing partners of the Corporate Service Corps, is part of the coordination team that is carrying out the program in Los Baños, Philippines.

The Peace Corps and IBM partnership, one of its kind, is working with three countries in 2016. The Philippines is the second to host the project. The first was recently completed in Ghana, Africa supporting girls’ empowerment and education through the Let Girls Learn initiative in March. The third engagement will be in Mexico this August supporting an environmental project.

In 2015, the PCR program fielded 332 volunteers globally, the highest number in its 20-year history. PCR was originally founded as Crisis Corps in 1996 and has fielded more than 2,900 volunteers serving more than 80 countries. The Philippines has the largest PCR program, which started in 2007. This year more than 20 response volunteers are scheduled to serve.

(This article is a Peace Corps press release). 

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Asia Rice Foundation USA announces 2015 Travel and Study Grant winners

During their 16th annual meeting, held on 25 July at U.C. Davis, the trustees of the Asia Rice  Foundation USA (ARFUSA) announced four 2015 winners of the organization’s Travel and Study Award Program. The objective is to help develop the next generation of young rice scientists.

They are Jenna Reeger, pursuing a PhD in plant biology at Penn State University; Anuj Kumar, a Monsanto Beachell-Borlaug International Research Fellow doing research on rice drought tolerance and water use efficiency at the University of Arkansas; Anne-Marie Mitchell, a Peace Corps Volunteer (2014-16) in Benin under the Master’s International Program with Cornell University; and Hussain Sharifi, a PhD student in the Agro-Ecosystems Laboratory at the University of California at Davis.

Ms. Reeger, a University Graduate Fellow, a Graham Endowed Fellow, and Roche/ARCS Foundation Scholar, is finishing her first year with Kathleen Brown and Jonathan Lynch in the Roots Lab, studying anatomical traits of rice roots and their genetic controls. Jenna is determining the influence of increased percent aerenchyma area and other root anatomical traits on drought tolerance in rice in greenhouse and field trials and comparing anatomical trait development and influence under drought stress between greenhouse-grown and field-grown rice.

She is already attending IRRI’s 2015 Rice: Research to Production Course, 10-28 August, where she is learning the fundamentals of rice production and the key research concepts and methods employed in IRRI’s programs for rice improvement. She will be able to make use of that knowledge in her own research. She plans to return to IRRI to conduct detailed drought trials with Dr. Amelia Henry, IRRI’s drought physiologist.

Mr. Kumar is doing his PhD studies in the department of Crop, Soil, & Environmental Sciences (CSES) at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville with Dr. Andy Pereira as his major advisor. His project, Development and Characterization of Rice Genotypes for Water-Use Efficiency and Drought Resistance, is a collaborative research between University of Arkansas and IRRI. His aim is to screen the USDA rice mini-core collection for water use efficiency and drought resistance related parameters, generate and evaluate the populations (F2, BC1, etc.) from high-yielding, but drought-sensitive and drought-tolerant genotypes, and map QTLs for grain yield and drought-related parameters.

His trip to IRRI will include participation in the international Molecular Breeding Course (28 Sept.-9 Oct.) and a continued stay at the Institute through Dec. 2015 to conduct some research training including work with Dr. Arvind Kumar, leader of IRRI’s rainfed lowland South Asia plant breeding group, for phenotyping of an F2 population (indica x glaberrima) and some other advanced lines. He will also learn other advance technologies to impose drought in the field.

Ms. Mitchell is studying international agriculture and rural development while in the West African nation of Benin. As a volunteer, she is serving as the Rice Programs Manager for the 2015 Food Security Committee where she is developing informational rice manuals and resources and training fellow volunteers on best management practices that can be implemented in their respective communities. The aim of her project is to reinforce best management practices and to advance simple technologies through the discovery of the most effective tools for weeding rice fields.

Through farmer experimentation, she hopes to determine the most suitable weeding instruments for the southeastern region of the country. With the assistance of the Union of Rice Farmers of the Oueme Plateau (URIZOP), the Collaborative Council of Rice Farmers in Benin (CCR-­‐B), and Farm Integrated Agricultural Solidarity (SAIN), 20 rice farmers from around the Oueme Department will be chosen to experiment with three different weeding methods: by hand or with a hand tool, with a cono-­‐weeder, and using a locally—made, ecologically—adapted weeder. This equipment is being financed by the ARFUSA grant.

Before the start of the growing season in October, farmers will be chosen by CCR-­‐B and trained on best management principles and surveyed on their perception of rice practices and the overall experiment. As a part of the experiment, farmers will be asked to use 9-­‐12 rice plots, using 3-­‐4 plots per weeding method. Post-­‐surveys will be conducted at the end of the season (April-May 2016) to evaluate the advantages or disadvantages of each weeding method.

Mr. Sharifi, a native of Afghanistan, is aiming to develop a predictive tool in order to support

improvements in rice breeding, production, quality, and management. To this end, he is evaluating the effects of environmental factors (such as temperature, photoperiod sensitivity, and field management practices, including irrigation practices such as the alternate wetting-drying system) on rice growth and development.

As a prominent part of his research, he has tested the accuracy of Oryza2000 and CERES-Rice, widely used rice crop growth models, under these environmental variables. The accuracy of these models under varying environmental factors is essential to efficient rice crop management—and consequently yield and profitability—in the face of climate change. Not wasting any time, he has already arrived at IRRI to attend the 2015 Rice: Research to Production Course, which ARFUSA is funding for him. Particularly interested in crop modeling, he will also be conferring with Tao Li, IRRI’s crop modeler.

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For more information about ARFUSA, go to www.asiariceusa.org