Los Baños, Philippines
May 9, 2003

The leading scientific journals Nature and Science have both published calls urging renewed financial support for the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

"Despite rumors to the contrary, the role of the International Rice Research Institute is as important as ever," begins an editorial in the 1 May issue of Nature (Vol. 423) entitled Rice institute needs strong support. However, it adds, "In the three years from 2001 to 2003, IRRI's annual core funding dropped by 26%, and similar cuts are expected in the future."

"It is essential that support for IRRI be mobilized," states the Nature editorial. "Researchers there, where research that spurred the Green Revolution was carried out, sometimes hear their success in producing abundant, high-yielding rice as a justification for cutting their budget, as if to say 'your job is over.' But the institute's job is not over - it has just begun."

In the same week, the 2 May issue of Science (Vol. 300) ran a broader look at the Green Revolution and the role played by IRRI and the other 15 international agricultural research centers (IARCs) in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. In summarizing the findings of their book Assessing the impact of the Green Revolution, 1960 to 2000, R.E. Evenson and D. Gollin wrote that "the IARCs will have an important role to play in generating and sustaining future advances in agricultural technology for the developing world."

The Science authors add, "The budgets of many IARCs, not to mention many of their national program counterparts, have declined sharply in real terms over the past decade." This has came about, the authors surmise, in part because development agencies, "perhaps eager to find shortcuts to development, have tended to shift funding away from agricultural research and toward other priorities."

The articles in both journals recount the successes of publicly funded agricultural research, especially the high-yielding modern crop varieties at the heart of the Green Revolution. Drs. Evenson and Gollin point out that, contrary to popular belief, the contributions made by modern varieties have increased over time.

"Gains from MVs [modern varieties] were larger in the 1980s and 1990s than in the preceding two decades - despite popular perceptions that the Green Revolution was effectively over by this time," they write. "Overall, the productivity data suggest that the Green Revolution is best understood not as a one-time jump in production, occurring in the late 1960s, but rather as a long-term increase in the trend growth rate of productivity. This was because successive generations of MVs were developed, each contributing gains over previous generations.... The end result...is that virtually all consumers in the world have benefited from lower food prices."

Had there been no Green Revolution, the authors add, "prices would have remained constant or risen modestly." As a result, "caloric intake per capita in the developing world would have been 13.3 to 14.4 percent lower, and the proportion of children malnourished would have been from 6.1 to 7.9 percent higher. Put in perspective, this suggests that the Green Revolution succeeded in raising the health status of 32 to 42 million preschool children. Infant and child mortality would have been considerably higher in developing countries as well."

The Nature editorialist concedes that "there is now more than enough rice to go around" following a 2.5-fold improvement in rice yield per hectare since the 1960s. But the writer goes on to report that the "eastern regions of India, suffering floods and soil alkalinity, struggle to meet their own needs despite the abundance of rice produced in the well-irrigated Punjab region. Telling people to redistribute rice won't help much. Local growers need to be able to look after themselves - for them, research into productivity continues to play an essential role."

Drs. Evenson and Gollin agree with the Nature editorial about the need to extend the benefits of the Green Revolution to those who have been left behind because they inhabit fragile agroecological zones. "The challenge for the coming decades is to find ways to reach these farmers with improved technologies," they write. "For many, future green revolutions hold out the best, and perhaps the only, hope for an escape from poverty.

"Yet the prospects for continued green revolutions are mixed," they continue. "On the one hand, the research pipeline for the plant sciences is full. Basic science has generated enormous advances in our understanding of plant growth and morphology, stress tolerance, pathogen resistance, and many other fields of science. This understanding should lead in due course to improvements in agricultural technologies. But, on the other hand, IARCs and NARS [national agricultural research systems] are faced with numerous challenges to their survival" in term of curtailed funding.

Nature picks up the thread regarding how the recent sequencing of the rice genome, detailing the genetic heritage that guides the plant's development, affords new opportunities to rice scientists working to crack such daunting challenges as drought tolerance.

"Researchers hope to tap the secrets of the rice genome to meet these challenges - a good bet, considering the unexplored biodiversity in the rice germ stocks," the editorialist writes, recapitulating a 3-page news feature in the week-earlier, 24 April, issue of Nature (Vol. 422). "But there are significant obstacles to bringing genomic science to bear on farmers' practices. IRRI, whose rice lines have been bred into over a third of the new lines produced worldwide since the 1960s, is well positioned to take up that challenge."

In the news feature, David Cyranoski, the journal's Asian-Pacific correspondent, reports that a central obstacle to progress is that "genome researchers and breeders are speaking different languages." He adds, "IRRI...hopes to play a key role in bridging the gap between genome researchers and plant breeders."
 
The institute has, in fact, taken strides toward realizing that hope. In January, IRRI and 17 other research institutions in 12 countries launched the International Rice Functional Genomics Consortium to accelerate gene discovery by facilitating communication and the exchange of resources and data. And, for the past decade, IRRI has led the Asian Rice Biotechnology Network, which aims to build and support the capacity of NARS partners to use molecular tools to speed development of improved rice cultivars.

These partnerships promise to expand exponentially the capacity of rice scientists to mold and fire the clay of genomic knowledge into the hardened bricks of sustainable rural development - the productive, resilient and nutritious rice varieties with which Asian farmers are building a better tomorrow.

IRRI is the world's leading international rice research and training center. Based in the Philippines and with offices in 11 other countries, it is an autonomous, nonprofit institution focused on improving the well-being of present and future generations of rice farmers and consumers, particularly those with low incomes, while preserving natural resources. IRRI is one of 16 Future Harvest centers funded the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an association of public and private donor agencies.

For more information, visit the websites of CGIAR or Future Harvest. Future Harvest is a nonprofit organization that builds awareness and supports food and environmental research for a world with less poverty, a healthier human family, well-nourished children, and a better environment. Future Harvest supports research, promotes partnerships, and sponsors projects that bring the results of agricultural research to rural communities, farmers, and families in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Web (IRRI): <http://www.irri.org>
Web (Library): <http://ricelib.irri.cgiar.org>
Web (Riceweb): http://www.riceweb.org
Web (Riceworld): http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org