Hotline Archives

China steps up efforts to ensure food security

China's rapidly growing strength in research and development has been highlighted by important new agreements that will help ensure the future food security of the world's most populous nation. While pushing to develop its scientific skills across the board, China is already having notable success in agriculture, especially in rice research.

Recently, senior Chinese agricultural officials met with their counterparts from IRRI in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou to assess the progress of China-IRRI collaboration over the past two years and to develop a new work plan for 2000-2001.

Gaining special recognition during the event was the expanding participation and support of several increasingly important Chinese research institutions. "It is indeed impressive how China is continuing to develop its rice research capacity," said Dr. William Padolina, IRRI's deputy director general for partnerships.

The priority areas for collaborative research and training for 2000-2001 include the Gold Rice Bowl Project, rice functional genomics and molecular breeding, and the continuing exchange of hybrid and other rice varieties for further development.

Using a systems approach to ensure sustainable rice production, the proposed China-IRRI Gold Rice Bowl Project seeks to mobilize human and financial resources to provide technology and policy interventions for food security. The project places special emphasis on the economic returns from rice farming, hence the term "gold."

IRRI expects the project to serve as a prototype for similar efforts in other countries. "We have always focused on reducing poverty as well as ensuring food security, and projects like the Gold Rice Bowl effort allow us to further develop and refine our techniques in these two key areas," Dr. Padolina explained.

Dr. Padolina, who chaired the meeting, said that IRRI's role in rice-producing nations such as China is increasingly to serve as a catalyst to enhance local capacity in rice research. "We especially take great pride in the very close and productive relationship we have built up with China over the years," Dr. Padolina said.

"Having helped ensure the food security of the world's largest nation, IRRI and China are now strongly focused on reducing poverty in Chinese rural areas," he added. "It's very satisfying to see our roles changing as China continues to develop not just economically but also in terms of its scientific research capacities."

More than 200 rice specialists and scientists worldwide discussed Rice Research and Production in the 21st Century in an international symposium held at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, United States, on 15-17 June to honor the late Robert F. Chandler, Jr.

Dr. Chandler helped found IRRI in Los Ba๑os, Philippines, in 1960 and led it until 1972. He was a Cornell University professor and the founding director general in 1972 of the Taiwan-based Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC). He died on 23 March 1999 near Mt. Dora, Florida, at the age of 91.

During the symposium, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Norman Borlaug said the world would have to farm three times as much land to produce current levels of food if farmers still used the technology available in 1950. Dr. Borlaug led the development of high-yielding wheat varieties that, along with the IRRI rice semidwarfs, triggered the Green Revolution in the 1960s. The symposium also discussed Intensive Rice Production Systems: Implications and Opportunities; Developments in Genetics: Future Opportunities in Rice; and The History of Rice Breeding: IRRI's Contribution. Speakers included Dr. Randolph Barker, economist at the International Water Management Institute, Sri Lanka; Dr. W. Ronnie Coffman, director of the Cornell Agricultural Experiment Station; Dr. Robert W. Herdt, vice president, Rockefeller Foundation; and IRRI director general Dr. Ronald P. Cantrell.

Dr. Cantrell spoke on The Evolving Relationship Between the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS). In his address, he emphasized the intermediary role IRRI can play in rice research citing as an example improving the vitamin A content of rice.

IRRI will hold more international symposia on cutting-edge science, such as the 4th International Rice Genetics Symposium in October this year and a world conference in either India or China in 2001 or 2002 to discuss issues critical to rice agriculture.

The Office for Research of the International Agriculture Program of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences of Cornell University and the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development sponsored the symposium with funding assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation.

More than 150 scientists and scholars involved in the Green Revolution in rice met for an IRRI reunion 17-19 June at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States. The reunion followed the international symposium Rice Research and Production in the 21st Century that honored the late Robert F. Chandler, Jr.

Those attending the reunion represented a veritable "who's who?" in world rice research, journalism, and communication. They included Dr. W. Ronnie Coffman, IRRI rice breeder (1972-84) and now director of the Cornell Agricultural Experiment Station; Dr. Benito S. Vergara, author of the IRRI publication A farmer's primer on growing rice; Dr. Ed Oyer, a veteran of international agricultural projects in the Philippines and Indonesia; and Dr. S. K. De Datta, IRRI agronomist (1964-91) and now director of the Office of International Research and Development at Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg.

Luminaries also included Ms. Ellen Maurer, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who spent 1984 on sabbatical as an IRRI editor; former IRRI economist (1966-78) Dr. Randolph Barker and his son, Mr. Shaun Barker, coordinator of the Partners in Business program at Utah State University; Dr. John Brien, who conducted his PhD research with IRRI's Communication and Publications Department in 1980-81; and Dr. Russell Freed, IRRI rice breeder in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines (1972-80) and now acting director of the Institute of International Agriculture at Michigan State University.

Dr. Henry M. Beachell attended the reunion at age 93. He joined IRRI in 1963, "retired" from IRRI-Philippines in 1971, only to serve as the Institute's rice breeder in Indonesia for 10 more years. In 1996, he shared with Dr. Gurdev S. Khush, principal IRRI plant breeder, the World Food Prize.

Four IRRI directors general attended the reunion together with their wives: Dr. Ronald P. Cantrell (incumbent) from Los Ba๑os, Philippines; Dr. Klaus Lampe (1988-95) from Frankfurt, Germany; Dr. Nyle C. Brady (1973-81) from Gilbert, Arizona; and Dr. Robert Havener (interim DG, 1998) from California. Dr. Tom Hargrove, who headed IRRI's Communication and Publications Department from 1979 to 1992, also attended the symposium and reunion.

Recent developments in rice research could provide millions of men, women, and children in some of the world's poorest nations with inexpensive, new ways to improve their health. Research on improving nutrition and human health in the developing world was discussed during the Mid-Term Meeting of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in Dresden, Germany, 24-26 May. The gathering came when rice research was the focus of international attention, following important developments such as the Astra-Zeneca breakthrough with vitamin-A rice in January and the rice genome announcement by Monsanto in April.

IRRI director general Dr. Ronald P. Cantrell stressed that the research on vitamin A, when it gets under way, will be only one of several projects that could ultimately help improve human health. A good example of such alternative strategies is IRRI's work on rice found to be naturally rich in iron and zinc. Together with partners from Australia's Adelaide University, IRRI researchers have been conducting a feeding trial with the new nutritionally rich rice involving a group of religious sisters in a Manila convent. Many of these sisters were clinically anemic while on a control diet of ordinary market rice. But after eating experimental rice IR68144 developed by IRRI using traditional plant breeding, the serum ferritin levels in their blood leaped, in many cases two or three times higher.

Equally promising is IRRI's research into getting farmers to reduce the unnecessary use of farm chemicals such as insecticides. An IRRI research project in Long An Province in Vietnam led to a 53 percent drop in household and insecticide use in one season, motivating local governments of 15 other provinces in the Mekong Delta to launch their own campaigns. Spray frequencies decreased by 70 percent, and the proportion of farmers who believed that insecticides were necessary for high yields dropped from 83 to 13 percent. These results led the Vietnamese government to stop the registration of insecticides for leaffolder control.

Nitrate contamination in aquifers caused by the use of nitrogenous fertilizers may also pose health hazards to rural communities in Southeast Asia. IRRI researchers discovered that nitrate concentration in many tube wells in at least one Philippine province far exceeded the World Health Organization's safety limits for human health. As a result, local governments in the Philippines are looking at policies to minimize such pollution hazards.

After the creation in 1996 of the Systems Research Network for Ecoregional Land Use Planning in Tropical Asia (SysNet), IRRI began to sense the huge conflicts that could develop if Asia's swelling population continued to face poverty and hunger simply because of a lack of planning or because development continued without regard for proper management of natural resources. The success of SysNet is that it has all stakeholders talking to one another. After seeing the system in action, Malaysian and Philippine officials want the SysNet methodology applied to their national planning programs.

A team was set up at IRRI to figure out how it should be done. This involved the national agricultural research systems (NARS) of the Philippines, India, Malaysia, and Vietnam, and the Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands. Together they designed the methodology and the tools needed to make it work. The SysNet team took on four case studies that represent a virtual cross section of Asian rural life and social aspiration. They cover Can Tho Province in Vietnam's Mekong Delta, Haryana State in northwestern India, the Kedah-Perlis Region of Malaysia, and Ilocos Norte Province in northern Philippines. These regions are facing rapidly growing and competing demands on land and water.

SysNet coordinator Dr. Reimund Roetter said that each study begins with high-level meetings to identify land-use objectives and natural resource problems. Then the study identifies individuals, community leaders, and farmers' representatives. These make up one group of stakeholders. A second group comprises a multidisciplinary team of scientists called the SysNet country team. The team is supported by scientists from IRRI and the Wageningen University and Research Centre, and it usually recruits researchers from the NARS of the country concerned.

The scientific teams, in regular consultation with local stakeholders, begin creating computer models based on the conditions of the study region. Modeling priorities are identified and relevant data are gathered and added to a rapidly growing bank of information. Simultaneously, an intensive training effort prepares country teams for the task ahead. Some scientists are trained at SysNet headquarters in IRRI. Others undergo local training in computer modeling and data management, while community leaders are lectured on SysNet methodology and take part in interactive working sessions in which their land use planning and analysis system (LUPAS) is asked to analyze future scenarios. This includes, for instance, forecasting changes in agricultural production and associated land and resource use if new crops are introduced. The project has begun to bring stakeholders together in the Korat Basin of northeastern Thailand and in the Red River Valley region of northern Vietnam.

IRRI scientists have developed a diagnostic kit to detect one of the most feared rice viral diseases in Asia: the rice tungro disease complex. The kit, contained in a small cardboard box, has been successfully field-tested and has proven to be reliable in 83 to 89 percent of cases. Rice tungro disease can devastate thousands of hectares of rice in a single outbreak, such as those in Indonesia in 1995 and in the southern part of the Philippines in 1997. Plants are left yellow, stunted, and totally destroyed, and farmers face ruin. Although major outbreaks are infrequent, there are areas of intensive irrigated rice farming where the disease is endemic and wipes out small pockets of the crop on a regular basis.

The new test kit contains seven tubes with various solutions, forceps, a pipette, and special membranes upon which sap from the freshly cut rice stem is imprinted. After the test, the imprinted circles of sap on the membrane turn purple if they are infected and remain clear if they are healthy. The kit is simple to use and has been designed for agricultural extension workers and plant breeders. It is particularly useful to breeders because all rice varieties released in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and parts of India must have tungro resistance built into the plant. Although the prototype kits have worked well, further development is needed. At present, they cost about US$25 to make.

Four IRRI scientists will be leaving the Institute even as three new scientists have joined the IRRI family. The four departing scientists are being recognized for their contributions to IRRI and to rice research.

Dr. Jean-Louis Pham is a population geneticist seconded from the Institut de recherche pour le d้veloppement (IRD) in France in 1995. He led an innovative project for on-farm conservation of rice varieties that involved participation of biological and social scientists, and partner institutions in the Philippines, Vietnam, and India. He also helped develop a molecular marker laboratory in IRRI's Genetic Resources Center (GRC) for the assessment of rice diversity.

Dr. Alan K. Watson, seconded from McGill University (Canada) in 1991, has successfully isolated and tested organisms for the control of two important rice weeds, Echinochloa and Sphenoclea, and leaves a strong research program in a difficult area-discovering, isolating, identifying, culturing, and testing pathogens for biological control.

Dr. Seepana Appa Rao, who has been with IRRI since 1995, explored rice genetic resources in the Lao PDR and other Southeast Asian countries, trained more than 200 national program staff in the skills of collecting rice germplasm, helped establish a genebank for the conservation of Lao rice varieties, and characterized rice varieties for the uplands of the Lao PDR.

Ms. Genoveva Loresto served IRRI for 37 years. She rose through the ranks to the position of senior associate scientist in 1994 in the GRC until she was appointed as project scientist and assistant coordinator of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation-funded project Safeguarding and Preservation of the Biodiversity of the Rice Genepool. She was a member of the team that bred the upland rice variety Makiling that was released in 1990.

The newcomers to IRRI are Dr. Nakuhito Nozoe from Japan, who joined IRRI as an agronomist in the Agronomy, Plant Pathology, and Agroecology-Soil and Water Sciences Division (APPA-SWS) and head of the Physio-Genetic Study under the IRRI-Japan Collaborative Project; Dr. Madumma Dhanapala from Sri Lanka, an affiliate scientist in APPA-SWS and coordinator of the Flood-Prone Ecosystem Research Consortium; and Dr. Casiana Vera Cruz, who was with the Institute (1975-96) and later rejoined in 1998 as a consultant in the Entomology and Plant Pathology Division. A plant pathologist, she specializes in host-pathogen interactions, host-plant resistance, and population biology/structure of plant pathogens.

IRRI director general Dr. Ronald P. Cantrell was recently conferred the Distinguished Agricultural Alumni Award by Purdue University in the United States for his "professional achievements and dedicated service to agriculture and society."

Dr. Cantrell, from Shamrock, Texas, received his Master of Science (1969) and PhD (1970) in plant breeding and genetics from Purdue University. A Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy, Dr. Cantrell was professor of agronomy (1981-82) at Purdue University, where he won several outstanding teaching awards. As chief-of-party and agronomist, Dr. Cantrell worked with the Purdue University Farming Systems Team in Burkina Faso, where he was responsible for conducting on-farm research (1982-84). He later joined the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico in 1984 as director of the Maize Program. In 1990, Dr. Cantrell became professor of plant breeding and head of the Agronomy Department at Iowa State University. He joined IRRI in 1998.

Dr. Michael Jackson, the head of IRRI's Genetic Resources Center, recently discussed with Canadian Minister for Agriculture and Agri-Food Mr. Lyle Vanclief the Institute's efforts to ensure the long-term preservation of rice biodiversity through research during Mr. Vanclief's visit to the International Rice Genebank and IRRI's biotechnology facilities. Canada supports IRRI and Asian rice research programs through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

Dr. Gurdev S. Khush, the principal plant breeder of IRRI, recently discussed a new, high-yielding rice variety developed by the Institute with Sri Lankan Minister for Agriculture and Lands D. M. Jayaratne. During his visit, Minister Jayaratne was also updated on Sri Lanka's Hybrid Rice Research Program. The Sri Lankan Department of Agriculture is an active member of several IRRI-related international networks such as the International Network for the Genetic Evaluation of Rice (INGER), the Asian Rice Farming Systems Network, and the International Network on Soil Fertility and Sustainable Rice Farming. Several Sri Lankan rice varieties are being grown in other countries because of INGER.

Scientists from China reaffirmed their strong partnership with IRRI by presenting a plaque describing the Institute as the "Cradle of (the) Green Revolution and Rice Bowl of the World." The plaque was presented during the recent International Rice Research Conference hosted by IRRI. Dr. Yuan Long Ping of the China National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Center presented the plaque to IRRI director general Dr. Ronald P. Cantrell. Also at the presentation were IRRI deputy director general for research Dr. Ren Wang, former Institute director general Dr. Nyle C. Brady, and Dr. Chang Xiang Mao of the Guangxi Rice Research Institute. Dr. Brady led a team of IRRI scientists to China in 1976 that started the IRRI-China collaborative research partnership. Since then, the relationship has led to advances in many areas of rice research and breeding.

IRRI hosted the Hazardous Material Technician Training Course (HAZMAT 2000) organized by GlobeCare Services, Inc., 8-12 May. American safety expert Leonard Lamb handled the course. The participants learned to recognize, identify, and categorize hazardous materials and gained first-hand information on toxicology, emergency response planning, respiratory protection, options for offensive and defensive control of hazardous materials, rescue considerations, and decontamination procedures. IRRI maintains the highest standards in the handling of hazardous materials for agricultural research as required by the Philippine government and international safety regulatory bodies.

IRRI mourns the loss of a gentle and goodhearted man, agricultural engineer Makoto Ariyoshi, who passed away on 18 June 2000 at age 74. Mr. Ariyoshi worked with the Test and Evaluation Section of IRRI's Agricultural Engineering Department in 1981-85. Condolences and messages of support can be sent to Mrs. Michiko Ariyoshi, 33-10 Ohyama-chou, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, 151-0065 Japan.