Rice Today magazine is publishing edited excerpts in each issue from selected interviews with rice pioneers. As one of the activities to commemorate IRRI’s 50th birthday, we have already logged around 100 hours in conversation with more than 50 pioneers (with more planned), ranging from researchers who first roamed the rice plots with IRRI’s first director general Robert F. Chandler, Jr., to others recently retired, to researchers' spouses and children, and to the farmers themselves.

Through 2010, Rice Today is featuring, along with the interview excerpts in the magazine, full transcripts (see Peter Jennings, Carolyn Moomaw, Nyle Brady, Kwanchai Gomez, Usha Palaniswamy, and Gary Toenniessen examples below; and occasional full video productions (as with the Jennings interview and a forthcoming conversation between economists Randy Barker and Robert Herdt) here on the Rice Today Web site. Click each pioneer photo below for a YouTube clip.

Further below is a link to a diverse cross-section of responses to one question: As IRRI approaches its 50th anniversary in 2010, what do you see as the Institute's greatest challenge?

 Luck is the residue of design                    The problem solver
 Peter Jennings                                             Nyle C. Brady
                      

Reflections of a rice widow                         Figures & fake guns
Carolyn Moomaw Wilhelm                          Kwanchai Gomez
                   

Dedicated scientists...                               Outstanding farmer revisited
Usha Rani Palaniswamy                             Sardar Jagjit Singh Hara
                   
 

 "Rock" and rice...                                        New: Trouble with economists
 Gary Toenniessen                                       Randy Barker & Bob Herdt