Scientists from India have swept many of the prestigious rice-research awards announced during the International Year of Rice, details of which were confirmed at the World Rice Research Conference in Japan last week.

Topping the list was the winner of this year's Senadhira Award, which honors every two years a leading Asian scientist working in rice research. S. Mallik, a rice breeder at the Rice Experiment Station, Chinsurah, West Bengal, India, was chosen for his development of rice varieties for rainfed lowlands in eastern India. Dr. Mallik has devoted 27 years to generating technologies for the unfavorable rainfed lowland ecologies in India. Thirty-four of his breeding lines have been recommended for release through the national testing program, and many other lines sent to international nurseries have performed well.

Dr. Mallik has also conducted research on the genetics and physiology of rice tillering (branching) and high-density grain and worked closely with the farmers of West Bengal in participatory research experiments and front line demonstration trials.

Scientists from India also did well in a series of seven US$500 awards for short scientific papers presented by International Rice Research Notes (IRRN), now in its 29th year of publication by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). Papers that have not yet been published in IRRN will appear in the December 2004 issue, as will abstracts of the previously published papers.

Indian meteorologist G. Nageswara Rao was the first author of the winning paper in the Socioeconomics category, Advance estimation of rice production in India from weather indices. Dr. Rao, who currently works under the United Nations Development Program as an assistant professor and is the head of the Meteorology Department at Arba Minch University in Ethiopia, collaborated on the paper with former colleagues at the Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture in Hyderabad, India.

The award for Pest Science and Management went to the paper Pseudomonas strain GRP3 induces systemic resistance against sheath blight in rice caused by Rhizoctonia solani. The first author was Ashutosh Pathak, a microbiologist now working for a water purification firm in the Indian state of Uttaranchal while serving as a faculty member and advisor in food technology at Allahabad University.

The prize in the Crop Management and Physiology category went to a paper by a group funded by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research at the Central Rice Research Institute in Cuttack, Orissa. "The group has been working on developing a suitable technique to screen rice varieties exhibiting submergence tolerance," explained Ramani Kumar Sarkar, senior scientist and first author of Chlorophyll fluorescence parameters as indicators of submergence tolerance in rice. "The traditional technique of submerging rice plants and then looking for survivors helped in identifying submergence tolerance, but resulted in the loss of valuable material during screening. So we tried a nondestructive technique based on chlorophyll fluorescence parameters to differentiate between tolerant and susceptible genotypes."

The winner in the Plant Breeding category was Santosh - A high-yielding variety for rainfed lowland developed through participatory breeding for Bihar, India. The first author of the paper was R. Thakur, who collaborated with four of his colleagues at Rajendra Agricultural University, in the Indian state of Bihar, and with R.K. Singh, the recently retired IRRI liaison scientist for India.

The paper Boron deficiency in calcareous soils reduces paddy yield and impairs grain quality won in the Soil, Nutrient and Water Management category. First author Abdul Rashid's 200 publications include the only soil science book produced in Pakistan. Internationally recognized for his expertise in micronutrition nutrition of crops, the chief soil scientist at Pakistan's National Agricultural Research Center is on the editorial board of the European Journal of Agronomy and has won several other awards and honors.

Two other IRRN Best Article Award winners hailed from Thailand and China. Anothai Sirabanchongkran was the first author of Varietal turnover and seed exchange: Implications for conservation of rice genetic diversity on-farm, which won in the Genetic Resources category. Winning the award in the Molecular and Cell Biology category was Development of TGMS lines and two-line rice hybrids through a shuttle breeding program between IRRI and China. Mou Tongmin, professor of plant breeding at the Plant Science and Technology College of Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan, was the first author.

Rice researchers from South Asia gained further recognition in awards announced late last month in Mexico at the annual general meeting of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The prestigious King Baudoin Award went to the Rice-Wheat Consortium led by the International Wheat and Maize Institute in Mexico, IRRI and several other CGIAR centers. The award recognized the consortium's seminal role in charting a course toward more ecologically friendly, higher-producing agriculture among the poor in South Asia.

"We're talking about a region that cuts across four countries - Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan - and is home to hundreds of millions of people, many of whom live in extreme poverty," said Dr. Mangala Rai, director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and member of the consortium's steering committee, who accepted the award on behalf of his colleagues. "The consortium's efforts have already benefited 250,000 farm households region-wide. Impacts down the road could be as great as those of the Green Revolution of the 1970s."

The consortium promotes many ecologically sound farming practices that save time, fuel, water and other inputs, as well as foster more resilient cropping systems. One such practice - sowing wheat seed directly into rice fields after the rice harvest without plowing at all - was used on nearly 1.3 million hectares in 2003-04, up from practically nothing a few years ago. Net benefits in India and Pakistan through higher yields and lower land preparation costs came to more than $100 million in the winter of 2003 alone.

The $10,000 King Baudouin Award recognizes CGIAR initiatives that benefit poor farmers and low-income people, foster sustainable agriculture, use innovative science and feature outstanding partnerships.

Finally, for the article "Enhanced iron and zinc accumulation in transgenic rice with the ferritin gene" published in Plant Science, a team of IRRI scientists won this year's CGIAR Science Award for Outstanding Scientific Article.

The article showed the potential of using rice to deliver improved nutrition to millions of poor rice consumers. Such research may help address iron deficiency anemia that afflicts billions of people worldwide. The award carries a cash prize of US$5,000. The team included Marta Vasconselos as lead author, Karabi Datta, Norman Oliva, Mohammad Khalekuzzaman, Lina Torrizo, Sellapan Krishnan, Margarida Olibeira, Fumyuki Goto and Swapan K. Datta.

IRRN BEST ARTICLE AWARD WINNERS

Genetic Resources: Varietal turnover and seed exchange: Implications for conservation of rice genetic diversity on-farm. A. Sirabanchongkran, N. Yimyam, W. Boonma and K. Rerkasem, Faculty of Agriculture, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand 50200; K. Coffey and M. Pinedo-Vasquez, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, New York, USA; and C. Padoch, Institute of Economic Botany, The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York, USA

Molecular and Cell Biology: Development of TGMS lines and two-line rice hybrids through a shuttle breeding program between IRRI and China. Tongmin Mou, Chunhai Li and Junying Xu, The National Key Laboratory for Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China; S.S. Virmani and D.L. Sanchez, IRRI

Socioeconomics: Advance estimation of rice production in India from weather indices. G. Nageswara Rao, Y.S. Ramakrishna, A.V.R. Kesava Rao and G.G.S.N. Rao, Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, Santhoshnagar, Hyderabad 500059, India

Soil, Nutrient, and Water Management: Boron deficiency in calcareous soils reduces paddy yield and impairs grain quality. A. Rashid and M. Yasin, Land Resources Research Program, National Agriculture Research Center (NARC); M. Ashraf, Crop Sciences Division, Pakistan Agricultural Research Council; and R.A. Mann, Rice Research Program, NARC, Islamabad, Pakistan

Pest Science and Management: Pseudomonas strain GRP3 induces systemic resistance against sheath blight in rice caused by Rhizoctonia solani. A. Pathak, A. Sharma and B.N. Johri, Department of Microbiology, College of Basic Sciences and Humanities; and A.K. Sharma, Department of Agroforestry, College of Agricultural Sciences, G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, India

Crop Management and Physiology: Chlorophyll fluorescence parameters as indicators of submergence tolerance in rice. R.K. Sarkar, D. Panda, D.N. Rao and S.G. Sharma, Central Rice Research Institute, Cuttack 753006, Orissa, India

Plant Breeding: Santosh - a high-yielding variety for rainfed lowland developed through participatory breeding for Bihar, India. R. Thakur, N.K. Singh, S.B. Mishra, A.K. Singh and K.K. Singh, Rajendra Agricultural University, Pusa, Samastipur, Bihar; and R.K. Singh, IRRI-India Office, New Delhi, India