Regional cooperation and ‘correct’ pricing key to sustainable rice production

HANOI, Vietnam - Mainstreaming good practices, finding the ‘right price’ of rice, and working together as a region are crucial to making rice production sustainable.

These are key points resulting from the discussion of global experts and stakeholders convened as the rice working group during the recently concluded 2nd Responsible Business Forum for Food and Agriculture held in the Vietnamese capital.

Proactive regional cooperation in agriculture, especially for rice—the region’s most important crop staple—becomes even more crucial with the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community.

Philippines: Conservation agriculture in South Asia highlighted at climate-smart agriculture workshop

The turbo happy seeder is a planter capable of directly drilling in the field while retaining surface residue and without any soil disturbance, thus following the principles of conservation agriculture. Photo from Parvinder Singh, CIMMYT. 

Experts have become concerned about the long-term sustainability of conventional tillage crop production systems. In the past decades, a variety of economic, environmental, and social problems have been plaguing these practices, including labor shortages, diminishing water and energy resources, deteriorating soil health, decreasing farm profitability, and other issues related to climate change.

Conservation agriculture (CA), on the other hand, can potentially address the challenges to the future of agriculture and food security. CA is a set of soil management practices that includes minimal soil disturbance, soil residue management, and crop diversification. These practices were presented during the regional workshop on climate-smart agriculture technologies in Asia on 2-4 June in Muntinlupa City.

Increased soil tillage or ploughing results in poor soil health or soil degradation. To keep soil disturbance to a minimum, zero-tillage technologies such as the laser leveller, turbo happy seeder, and zero-till relay planters, were developed and tested in selected sites in the Indo-Gangetic Plains in northern India.

Research on the energy dynamics of wheat production under different tillage techniques demonstrate that zero-tillage technologies have the highest energy-use efficiency and the lowest consumption of water and fuel. There is also evidence that zero- tillage technologies produce lower emission of greenhouse gases.

“To ensure that these zero-till technologies are farmer-friendly and will be disseminated easily, we tested these technologies through on-farm trials at the Bourlaug Institute for South Asia,” says Parvinder Singh, a research scientist from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. “They were also tested in farmer-participatory trials in selected climate-smart villages.”

The farm machinery needed for zero-tillage need not be costly, according to Dr. Singh who leads the research on climate-smart agricultural technologies such as zero-tillage with residue retention, relay planting, water- and nutrient-smart practices. Dr. Singh’s team worked with local manufacturers in developing affordable machines that will be readily available for market distribution once they have been tested. 

Underprivileged students receive free school supplies from IRRI-ECDC donation drive

More than 85 students of the Kabaritan Elementary School received bags containing school supplies and uniforms provided through a donation drive of the IRRI-Employees’ Credit and Development Cooperative (ECDC).

Lapis, Papel, at Bag, an annual activity now on its second year, enjoined ECDC members and IRRI employees to donate used school bags or cash to help underprivileged students in IRRI’s host community of Bay. The school supplies were distributed by ECDC members in a simple ceremony during the school opening on 1 June.

In keeping with its commitment to social and community services, cooperative members also participated in the annual Brigada Eswela, a clean-up drive to prepare classrooms for the school opening. In addition, ECDC also continued its feeding program for 400 young schoolchildren in Bay.

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Philippines: Heirloom rice awes foodies at BellySima

The unique culinary features of heirloom rice varieties from the Cordilleras were featured at the BellySima Food Festival as part of the market outreach of the Heirloom Rice Project (HRP) that is jointly implemented by the Department of Agriculture and the International Rice Research Institute. BellySima Food Festival 2015, held at the Glorietta 3, Makati, City on 12-13 June 2015, features and promotes healthy Filipino food options and experiences among consumers and entrepreneurs.

Heirloom rice was included in the Top 10 People's Choice among 40 participants to the festival. Event organizer RJ Ledesma of the Mercato Group expressed appreciation of the participation of HRP. "It is worth celebrating that more people know of these fantastic rice varieties in the country," Ledesma said.

At the festival, heirloom rice Ominio from the Mountain Provinces and the Tinawon rice from Ifugao, along with other heirloom varieties from Benguet and Kalinga were cooked and sampled by food enthusiasts. All these rice varieties were grown by highland farmers with the Rice Terraces Farmers Cooperative (RTFC), one of the implementing partners of HRP.

HRP is working toward increasing productivity of heirloom rice, which takes 6–7 months to mature and are thus grown only once a year. By linking heirloom rice to potential export and domestic markets, farmers are able to sustain their livelihoods,  the cultural prize of which is that the rice terraces that the region is famous for are preserved.

The HRP is a shared collaboration between the DA-Philrice, DA-Cordillera Administrative Region field office, local state colleges and universities, and IRRI.

The Bellysima Food Festival is a regular event at Glorietta 5 beginning 19 June 2015.

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Plant Breeding for Food Security symposium focuses on global impact of Gurdev Khush’s work on rice production

The Plant Breeding Center, in collaboration with the Confucius Institute, hosted the Plant Breeding for Food Security symposium on the global impact of plant genetics to rice production in honor of the work of Gurdev Khush.

Dr. Khush is an agronomist and geneticist who shared the 1996 World Food Prize with Henry Beachell for his achievements in attaining global rice security during a time of exponential population growth.  After serving as a faculty member of the University of California for seven years, he joined the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines as a plant breeder and was appointed head of the Plant Breeding Department in 1972. He spent over 21 years at IRRI directing and participating in genetic research and breeding. Dr. Khush played a key role in the development of more than 300 modern high-yielding rice varieties, which helped increase world rice production from 257 million tons in 1966 to 626 million tons in 2006. He returned to UC Davis where he is currently adjunct professor.

With a panel of his international colleagues and mentees, Dr. Khush addressed the symposium to discuss the challenges he faced during the Green Revolution, and once again expressed his dedication to and deep appreciation for the faculty he learned from, claiming, “UC Davis faculty prepared me for those challenges.” Audience members engaged the highly respected line-up of international and local speakers with questions and suggestions for future research, and to share stories of how Dr. Khush inspired them in their own work.

“To an American, it’s hard to understand just how important rice and rice breeding is to the world,” Dr. David Lobell, associate professor at Stanford University, said to give the audience some perspective on the breadth of Dr. Khush’s global recognition. “For an American like me, maybe the best way to understand the impact of Gurdev Khush is to know that, in many places, he is more of a household name than Michael Jordan.”

Over 200 guests came from all over the world to attend the day-long symposium to discuss the advances of global production in rice, wheat, and tomato; the future obstacles that face an ever-growing world population; and the technologies that will revolutionize farming and food production.


Source: plantbreeding.ucdavis.edu

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J.K. Ladha receives Crop Science Society of America award for outstanding contributions to agronomy

J.K. Ladha, a principal soil scientist and agronomist at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), is the recipient of the 2015 International Service in Crop Science Award for his outstanding contributions to agronomy. The award is given by the Crop Science Society of America.

Dr.  Ladha is a recognized authority in science and technology for food security and sustainable management of the world’s major cereal cropping systems. He is also the IRRI representative to India and Nepal, and provides leadership in developing and executing the vision and agenda of the Institutes’s research on crop and resource management in South Asia.

The impact of his research is evident from the number-one rank for number of publications in refereed journals and in h-index for citations in the whole CGIAR system. Dr. Ladha authored or co-authored 209 research articles in peer-reviewed international journals, and 95 in proceedings or books. Currently, Dr. Ladha is the regional editor of the journal Biology and Fertility of Soils.

The award will be formally presented to Dr. Ladha on 17 November during the scientific society’s International Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

View press release: Crop Science Society of America Announces 2015 Award Recipient

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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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