GRiSP Impact Stories

RICE Phase I Achievements and the UN SDGs

BETTER VARIETIES

Genetically engineered rice with high levels of iron and zinc is developed

A transdisciplinary group of scientists has succeeded in increasing iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn) levels in rice through biofortification—a breakthrough in the global fight against micronutrient deficiency or “hidden hunger.” Their research was recently published in Nature‘s Scientific Reports. Read on.

Growing hope with Green Super Rice

More than two years after Typhoon Haiyan devastated the island of Leyte in the Philippines, the survivors, especially the farmers, are still struggling to rebuild their lives. Green Super Rice (GSR) is giving them a fighting chance. Read on.

Rice against the tide

A new breed of rice is helping Filipino farmers in Bohol cope with seawater encroaching on their paddies. But in the race against climate change impacts such as rising sea levels, will rice scientists be able to stay one step ahead of the game? Read on.

Sowing their choices

Soe Moe Kyaw’s family was fishing in a different village when Cyclone Nargis devastated their township in 2008. The result was grim. He lost his wife and child, and several of his relatives. After this tragic loss, the remaining members of his family abandoned fishing and turned to rice farming, vowing to always be close to their homes and loved ones in case another catastrophe strikes. Read on.

IRRI’s new breeding factory

The road toward global food security is not without challenges. The population will balloon to 9 billion in 2050. The signs of climate change have never been so real—frequent floods, droughts, and storm surges. Storm surges make farmland in coastal areas too salty for most crops to grow. Also, pathogens and pests evolve. Therefore, a rice variety may lose its resistance to new strains of pathogens or insects. Read on.

Dawn of a new era in rice improvement

Traditional rice varieties encompass a huge range of potentially valuable genes. These can be used to develop superior varieties for farmers to take part in the uphill battle of feeding an ever-increasing world population (estimated to reach 9.6 billion by 2050). The genes linked to valuable traits can help breeders create new rice varieties that have improved yield potential, higher nutritional quality, better ability to grow in problem soils, and improved tolerance of pests, diseases, and the stresses, such as flood and drought, that will be inevitable with future climate change. Read on.

Upon the 100,000th cross

Before scientists ever started crossing different rice plants, farmers had inadvertently been at it for centuries. By the mid- 1800s, scientists were catching up, with Gregor Mendel’s research on inheritance and genetics paving the way for more advanced approaches to plant breeding into the 1900s. Read on.

Bouncing back from typhoon Haiyan

Husband and wife Joven and Lydia Ganapin, farmers in a small village in Babatngon, Leyte, Central Philippines, clearly remember the floods triggered by super typhoon Haiyan on 7 November 2013 that submerged their home and the farm they were renting. “Nothing was left,” Joven said. He was able to recover about 28 sacks of rice from his farm before the typhoon hit. He took them to a rice trader. He agreed to be paid by the trader after the typhoon. But, unfortunately, all the rice of the trader, including Joven’s, was looted. Joven was not paid because his rice had not even been weighed. Read on.

Hybrids head for the tropics

Hybrid rice has the potential to produce up to 30% more yield than the best-performing modern inbred varieties, thanks to A hybrid history vigor or heterosis. In 2011, the media reported that, on a test plot in Hunan, China, an output of 13.9 tons per hectare had been achieved—potentially setting a new world record. Such is the potential of hybrid rice varieties to feed the world and its ever-growing population. Read on.

More than seeds

Sri Premananda Swain, a farmer from Arapada Village, Balipatna Block, Khurda District in Odisha, did not mind that it had rained for a short while earlier that day. Long ago, rain bothered him a lot. He knew that if rain continued to pour a little harder and for a longer time, it meant disaster. Floods could bring all his efforts to nothing when his rice crop was under water. The village has around 40 households and most of them, like Mr. Swain’s, have small and marginal farmers who depend mainly on farming rice as their main crop. But, flooding is so common in his village because it is located near the river Dhanua. Read on.

Greener rice

Fears of food shortages following the rice crisis in 2007 and 2008 have prompted a dramatic shift in global trade and in economic and food security policies. Nations have put more focus now on agriculture—a situation somewhat reminiscent of the events that led to the Green Revolution. Read on.

Capacity building

The Learning Alliance: A coalition for change

Millions of Asian rice farmers struggle with low-quality grains, which are brought about by poor postharvest management, inappropriate technology, and a lack of understanding of the factors that affect rice quality. These problems result in a loss of potential income for farmers and lesser available rice in the market. The Learning Alliance (LA) is a way for actors in a rice value chain to work together and encourage cooperation to increase adoption of technologies, facilitate stronger partnerships, and use resources sustainably. Through LA, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) facilitates a network of stakeholders in the context of improving rice postharvest management. The alliance in Myanmar, composed of farmers and IRRI’s local partners from the rice value chain, aimed to produce better-quality rice and sell it to larger markets. Before Myanmar, the method was also used in various Southeast Asian countries where value chain actors similarly sought to improve their country’s postharvest systems. Read on.

ORYZA model a big hit in global rice research

ORYZA2000, a computer program that simulates growth and development of rice under a wide range of environments, has been cited by scientific papers at least 16,616 times as a tool for rice research and crop management. Developed at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), ORYZA2000 has become an important tool in modern agricultural research. Read on.

SEEDS OF LIFE IN NEPAL

Laxima Adhikari, a farmer in Nepal, used to suffer from an unstable supply of seeds, especially when drought affected her crops. Now, she boasts of bountiful harvests from rice and vegetable crops grown during the winter season. What caused this transformation? Read on.

BRIDGING THE GAP

In 1997, as a reaction to the growing concerns of consumers, British food retailers working with supermarkets in continental Europe decided to harmonize their different standards and procedures on product safety, environment, and labor. This initiative, called Global GAP (good agricultural practices), developed “good practices” in conventional agriculture, which highlighted the importance of integrated crop management and a responsible approach to worker welfare. Read on.

Better technologies

Striking a balance through ecologically engineered rice ecosystems

As our truck bounces down the narrow muddy track toward the Alubog family farm in Colonia, Bukidnon, Philippines, a huge irrigation canal, charged by the recent heavy rains, roars beside the road. The morning sun is heating up, clearing the low-lying mist to reveal a strange new landscape: a cluster of towering green pillars like the neatly arranged leafy temples of an abandoned jungle city is punctuated across the farm. The structures have attracted the attention of local farmers and are intensely monitored by scientists from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Philippine Department of Agriculture (DA) that regularly visit this corner of Mindanao. Read on.

Yield rises with WeRise

Unreliable weather can make or break rice farmers that rely on rainfall for water. Climate change makes it even harder to predict weather conditions, thus lowering the chances of recovering farmers’ investments in mitigating the impact of erratic rainfall patterns on their crops. To help solve this problem, a prototype weather rice-nutrient integrated decision support system (WeRise) came about. WeRise is a web application tool that integrates rice nutrients with weather data to provide farmers with weather and crop advisories. Read on.

The bubble that dries

In typical Philippine villages, rice grains spread out on open basketball courts or even on roads to sun-dry were a familiar scene for Ana Salvatierra, an agricultural engineer and researcher from the University of Hohenheim (UHOH) in Germany. Read on.

Laser-guided dreams

With her tiny frame, blunt-cut bangs, and trendy outfits, 28-year-old Truong Thi Thanh Nhan looks more like a school girl than a farmer. Nhan earned her degree in software programming from the University of Science in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in 2010. But, after graduation, she agreed to her parents’ wishes to oversee their family farm in Dak Lak Province in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. Read on.

Smarter, cleaner heat

If the searing heat wasn’t enough, the thick, dark smoke that engulfed the area surrounding the furnace made the workers want to give up. The smoke wasn’t confined only to the immediate vicinity, but it affected neighboring areas as well. This “smoke machine” was the inclined-grate design of a rice hull furnace used to provide heat to a flatbed dryer that is used to dry rice. Read on.

Eclipsing the sun: flatbed dryers

At first, the flatbed rice grain dryer did not take off in most countries because of the high-cost kerosene-fueled burner. Its 1-ton drying capacity per batch was too big for small farmers and too small for the commercial sector.

It was only in Vietnam where the technology was successfully adapted, thanks to a version modified by Nong Lam University (NLU). By 2005, around 4,000 dryers with 4- to 8-ton capacity were installed in the Mekong Delta, all using rice husk as fuel. Neighboring Lao PDR, Cambodia, and Myanmar had no dryers at that time. Indonesian dryers mostly installed by the government were not being used. And, only a few dryers based on the Vietnamese design were used in the Philippines.

The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) began working with NLU, national partners, and private stakeholders in 2006 to introduce the flatbed dryer in Southeast Asia. Read on.

Green fuel from rice

Farmers typically grow two or three crops a year. Since they don’t have enough turnaround time before beginning the next planting season, they resort to the quickest and easiest solution to get rid of the rice “waste,” that is, the residue—by burning. This releases methane, a greenhouse gas that remains in the atmosphere for 9–15 years and contributes to global warming. On top of this, exposure to smoke and soot causes respiratory problems among farmers and townspeople alike. Read on.

Dried to perfection

Farmers need not crack rice between their teeth to check whether the grains are dry enough for milling and storing because gauging the dryness of the grains no longer needs to be hit-and- miss. They can now be sure of the moisture content of their paddy because the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) has found an affordable alternative. Read on.

Even grounds

Few countries in Asia are familiar with precision land leveling or laser land leveling, but, in India, the technology has already been adopted in many states and it has almost become an indispensable tool in agriculture. Read on.

Conservation

Banking seeds

In Arakan Valley, the upland “rice belt” of North Cotabato, Philippines, farmers hold dear a rice variety—Dinorado, a native upland rice characterized by its pinkish grain, sweet aroma, and good eating quality. For the Arakeños, Dinorado has been part of their community as far as they can remember. Long ago, the Arakan Valley was home to exotic Dinorado rice. So much so that Dinorado has become part of their pride and social identity. Read on.

Heirloom in the mountains

Most organizations working toward sustainable development believe that giving people does not get rid of poverty. Instead of giving “doles,” empowering people and communities to take control of their situations has been deemed a more sustainable approach.

In the Philippines, the second phase of the Cordillera Highland Agricultural Resource Management Project (CHARMP2) works to reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of rural communities in the highlands of the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR). The CHARMP2 project, an International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) investment within the Department of Agriculture (DA), provides interventions such as community mobilization, watershed conservation, agriculture and agribusiness development, the promotion of income-generating activities, and the development of rural infrastructure. Read on.

Mankind takes a giant leap—again

The first was a footprint on the Moon. The second one is a freezer.

This freezer, however, is one dug deep inside a frozen mountain about 1,130 kilometers from the North Pole, in the archipelago of Svalbard, Norway. Tucked away in this giant refrigerated vault is the foundation of humans’ food—seeds. Neatly packed and frozen to withstand hundreds of years of storage and just about any conceivable destructive force known to humans are duplicates of seeds of different crops from all over the world, including more than a hundred thousand seeds of different rice types. Read on.

PEST AND DISEASES

ANMI fights off a vampire insect

In 2002, the Republic of Korea (South Korea) had four major problems in rice: blast, bacterial blight, cold stress, and brown planthopper (BPH)—the country’s most destructive rice insect pest. The job of the International Rice ResearchInstitute (IRRI) was to breed a new rice variety that is tolerant of these problems yet safe to the environment and for consumption. Read on.

Letting nature manage its battles

The efforts to manage rice pests such as planthoppers have taken on a simple message: let nature have its way in your fields. In essence, leave the friendlies such as spiders, predatory bugs, and parasitic wasps alone, and you increase rice’s chances against planthopper outbreaks. Read on.

Beating blight

Although there are chemicals developed to control this disease, none of them are completely effective at eliminating outbreaks. Read on.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Appeasing ‘nine dragons’ enraged by climate change

Vietnam’s mighty Mekong Delta comprises nine river mouths that give it its local name, “Cuu Long,” or “nine dragons.” Every year, it supplies Vietnam with around 20 million tons of rice, which is about 50% of the country’s total production. But, the significance of the rice supply from the Mekong Delta goes beyond Vietnam’s own 91 million rice consumers.

In 2011, more than 6 million tons of the Mekong Delta’s rice production were exported, making Vietnam the second-largest rice exporting country in the world. The country’s rice production could be critical to rice-importing nations, especially African countries, as it provides a pool of “cheap” rice that is traded globally alongside the more expensive premium rice coming from other major exporters such as India and Thailand. Read on.

Bangladesh combats the “white plague”

Each year, during the boro season (November-May), salinity is so high that a white film of salt covers paddy fields in the coastal areas of Bangladesh. For Bangladeshi farmers, this white color on top of their soil is a warning sign that their land is “sick.” Salinity is even dubbed the “white plague” in Australia’s newspapers and magazines, which indicates the seriousness of the problem when it strikes. Read on.

Ready for climate change

A growing number of subsistence farmers as well as seed growers are now planting “climate-change-ready” rice in the rice bowl state of Uttar Pradesh and the speedy uptake is unprecedented. The improved varieties are capable of surviving even under harsh environments such as drought or floods that are predicted to get worse with climate change or in problematic soils with high salt content that may become more widespread as sea levels rise because of climate change. The climate-change-ready rice has been bred into local mega-varieties that are high-yielding and widely grown by farmers. Read on.

GENDER

Three real-life heroes

An update on three women farmers in India who were successful in their quest to rewrite their destiny. Read on.

Empowering women farmers in the polder communities of Bangladesh

When women are empowered, their families, children, the next generation, and their communities are empowered, too. Read on.

Women on the path to progress

In India, self-help groups have made a tremendous impact on the lives of poor women in rural areas. Read on.

Women rice farmers: Agents of change in eastern India

STRASA has ensured that the seed interventions are not isolated and random initiatives, but active catalysts that contribute to the livelihood of the women and their households in stress-prone areas. Read on.

A STEADY SEED SUPPLY FOR THE NEPAL MID-HILLS

In the western mid-hill districts of Nepal, women have joined forces to form seed-producer groups. These women of substance manage their multiple roles as housewives, mothers, and partners in farming and income generation. Read on.