Former IRRI soil scientist shares insights at young researchers’ lunch

Yasukazu Hosen from the Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries of Japan hosted the IRRI Young Researchers’ Lunch on January 23. Dr. Hosen, a former soil scientist at IRRI and Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences, shared his expertise on greenhouse gases with San Hla Htwe, Mark Jeffrey Morete, Marilou Barrios, Alexandre Grondin, and Zilhas Ahmed Jewel. One of the important lessons he shared with the group is that nitrogen fertilizer application right before draining the field will cause higher amounts of nitrates to be released as greenhouse gases.

The Young Researchers Lunch is a monthly meeting for NRS and AFSTRI scientists who are in the early stages of their career. The purpose is to provide an opportunity for discussions with senior scientists on a range of topics including career paths. For more information, please contact Joy Sagabay (M.Sagabay@irri.org) or Amelia Henry (A.Henry@irri.org).


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Philippines: IRRI participates in 4th PhilRAA convention

More than eighty members of the Philippine-Rural Development Administration (Korea) Alumni Association (PhilRAA) attended the 4th PhilRAA convention, Revitalizing Linkages and Partnerships on S&T Innovations Towards Improving Livelihood of Farmers, at Traders’ Hotel in Pasay City on 24-25 January 2013. The convention featured technical presentations on the implementation of past and current RDA-PhilRAA-funded projects that showcased technologies suitable to some areas in the Philippines. PhilRAA members also elected its new board of directors and officers for 2013 to 2014. Mr. Julian Lapitan, senior manager of NPR-IRRI and a charter member of the association, was elected as the organization’s new President.

Hon. Min Kyong Ho, Consul General and Minister, gave the keynote speech at the convention on behalf of His Excellency Hyuk Lee, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the Philippines.

Dr. Bruce Tolentino, IRRI deputy director general for communications and partnerships, challenged participants to follow the example of Saemul Undong (New Village Movement) of Korea. The movement catalyzed the transformation of Korea to reach its current state though a unified and focused effort towards national development.

Sang-Hwa Kim, head of the International Training of the International Technical Cooperation Center (ITCC) represented Dr. Sae-Jung Suh, Director of ITCC, RDA. Mr. Kim, who also handles the alumni affairs at RDA, assured participants of their continued support to the association in its drive to further improving the livelihood of the farmers in the Philippines.

Organized in Los Banos, Laguna in 2003, PhilRAA is composed of fellows and officers from national agricultural research and extension agencies, state universities and colleges, and other entities who attended training at or officially visited the Rural Development Administration (RDA) of Korea.

PhilRAA aims to forge liaison among its members through conferences, seminars, dialogues, and civic and non-civic activities; provides venue for information exchange related to agriculture and natural resources; and, promotes and encourages collaborative activities that demonstrate suitable technologies that will uplift the livelihood of Filipino farmers.



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Philippines: IRRI holds workshops on greenhouse gas emissions from rice production

IRRI hosted three workshops on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from rice production on 21-24 January 2013. Scientists from Japan, China, India, and Southeast Asia as well as from various universities and the Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security program of the CGIAR attended the events to discuss GHG emission inventories and mitigation assessments.

The MIRSA Project

The first of the three workshops marked the launch of the GHG Mitigation in Irrigated Rice Systems: Guidelines from Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MIRSA) project. The project assesses the feasibility of GHG mitigation through alternate wetting and drying (AWD) technology in different rice-growing regions of Vietnam and the Philippines. AWD is a water-saving technology that lowland rice farmers can use to reduce their water use in irrigated fields.

The MIRSA project, funded by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries for one year, will use GHG emissions data from other IRRI activities. This project is composed of IRRI, as the lead organization; the National Institute of Agro-Environmental Science, Japan; and Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry, Vietnam.

Global Research Alliance

The second workshop was a meeting of the Paddy Rice Group of the Global Research Alliance (GRA) on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases on its ongoing activities and action plan. GRA has more than 30 member countries from all regions of the world.

The GRA Paddy Rice Group, co-chaired by Japan and Uruguay, aims to reduce emissions of paddy rice cultivation systems while improving overall production efficiency. Several IRRI scientists described new trends in crop management at the event. Participants visited IRRI’s farms to see different experiments on ecological intensification; work on the Impact on Carbon, Nitrogen and Water Budgets project; straw burning. They also visited the field sites of a new IRRI-PhilRice collaborative project on GHG emissions and AWD technology adoption in the Angat-Maasim Rivers Irrigation System in Bulacan province.

Assessment Group

The third workshop, Assessment Group for a Rice Emission Decision Support Tool, capped off the workshop series. The Group is part of a broader initiative, The Agricultural Synergies Project: Guidance for Integrating REDD+ and Agriculture. Among its objectives is the development of a decision support tool outline to evaluate the costs and practical issues involved in potential emission changes due to crop management. The meeting was co-chaired by Dr. Reiner Wassmann, IRRI’s climate change expert and coordinator of its climate change research program; Dr. Timothy Searchinger of Princeton University; and T.K. Adhya of Kalinga Institute in India.




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Philippine president declares 2013 as National Year of Rice

The year 2013 has been declared as the National Year of Rice in the Philippines by President Benigno S. Aquino III through a proclamation in anticipation of attaining rice self-sufficiency this year.

“The month of November of every year is also affirmed as National Rice Awareness Month,” the proclamation further stated.

With the theme Sapat na Bigas, Kaya ng Pinas (The Philippines can be rice sufficient), the National Year of Rice was proclaimed to raise public awareness on responsible rice consumption. Farmers were also encouraged to adopt modern technologies to improve farm productivity.

“President Aquino's declaration of 2013 as the National Year of Rice underlines the Philippine Government's renewed and intensified focus on strengthening the food security status of population, principally by promoting the productivity of the agricultural sector in general, and of the rice industry in particular. IRRI provides strong technical support for the Philippines' Food Staples Sufficiency Program (FSSP), enabling the host country to readily access the results of IRRI's research,” says V. Bruce J. Tolentino, deputy director general for communication and partnerships.

IRRI and the Philippine government had earlier signed an agreement to support, extend, and fast-track the delivery of the Philippines’ FSSP. Food Staples Sufficiency Program.

IRRI also has a range of activities planned in the Philippines for 2013 to align with the National Year of Rice, including:

• 30th Global Young Leaders Program (14-25 January) 
• BigAs2 Hack (24-25 August) (Read about BigAs Hackathon 2012) 
• 7th International Rice Genetics Symposium (5-8 November)

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Philippines: ADB-funded project links postharvest actors with finance sector

More than 50 representatives from various sectors attended a forum, Emerging opportunities for postharvest technologies and entrepreneurship, which aims to increase awareness among microfinance institutions, banks, and policymakers, of improved technologies and entrepreneurial enterprise opportunities.

The forum, held on 15 January in Butuan City, Agusan del Norte, also provided farmers who have tested these new options, to present sustainable business cases for adopting hermetic storage and business plans for pursuing contract drying services.


The forum was an activity of the Philippine Postharvest Learning Alliance, a multi-stakeholder platform that works to reduce postharvest losses and increase incomes of farmers and other postharvest actors. Learning alliances have also been established in Cambodia and Vietnam by the Asian Development Bank-funded Postharvest Project, with complementary support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

Alfred Schmidley, IRRI business model and value chain specialist, explains, “We hope that this event will inspire and allow these new stakeholders to establish better linkages to loan products and other services to technologies and enterprise pilot for scaling out further with Learning Alliance actors.”

Several business cases for adopting hermetic storage and mechanical drying services were presented by local farmers. Mr. Schmidley and Raquel Dacanay from Caraga State University provided guidance for the farmers in developing business cases.

Several financial institutions then presented a range of activities, products, and services available to the farmers who want funding for their business plans.

The participants also discussed issues on finance and policy and next steps for future learning activities.

The event culminated with a demonstration of the reversible airflow flatbed dryer by Dexter Ona and Caesar Tado from the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice); and the IRRI Super Bag by Jose Gomos, vice-president of GrainPro, Inc. (makers of the Super Bag), at the PhilRice Agusan del Norte station.



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Indonesia: Training series helps Asian countries use SAR data for rice apps

The Indonesian Centre for Agricultural Land Resources Research and Development (ICALRD), one of the research and management units of the Indonesian Agency for Agricultural Research and Development, hosted the first of three training courses by SARMAP on the use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data for rice applications.

The training series is held as part of the Remote sensing-based information and Insurance for Crops in Emerging economies (RIICE, http://www.riice.org) project, funded by the Swiss Development Cooperation.

This focus of the first course is on generation of key products—rice area mapping, phenological monitoring, and retrieval of selected bio-physical parameters—on the national level using SAR data acquired from old (ENVISAT ASAR and ALOS PALSAR-1) and current spaceborne systems (Cosmo-SkyMed and Radarsat-2).

The 10 participants were also introduced to the characteristics and use of forthcoming SAR sensors, in particular, Sentinel-1. All data processing was performed using RICEscape, a dedicated SAR processing chain developed by SARMAP.

Other courses will be conducted by IRRI on crop growth simulation modelling using ORYZA2000 and the combination of ORYZA2000 with SAR-based products, to soon provide precise information on rice production at national level.

The RIICE project—which includes Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and India—aims to reduce the vulnerability of smallholders in rice production by helping set up better and cheaper information systems, thus opening the way to rural advisory services

Although the main beneficiaries of the intervention are smallholder rice farmers in Asia, it also seeks to involve all actors in the value chain. The current project aims to help about 5 million farmers.

Key stakeholders of the program are national governments, national agricultural institutes, cooperatives/banks/farmer unions/other aggregators, and individual farmers.



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Bangladesh: Short-duration rice varieties help increase farmers' income

Farmers in the Sathkira District of Bangladesh have found that the tandem of short-duration rice and mustard varieties has helped increase their income, as it enables them to plant the boro rice on time in their rice-mustard-rice cropping system.

This was the highlight of a field day held on 15 January attended by 170 farmers from six villages. In the demo village, farmers grow either just two rice crops or a mustard crop (using a traditional mustard variety, Tori 7) between two rice crops.


Some farmers who saw the performance of short-duration rice (BRRI dhan39 and BINA dhan7) planted alternately with mustard varieties (BARI mustard14 and BARI mustard15) in 2011 began using the short-duration varieties in 2012. The results are encouraging yet more farmers to use the short-duration varieties in their traditional cropping system.

The field day was organized by Thengamara Mohila Sabuj Sangha, a NGO partner of the Cereals System Initiative for South Asia in Bangladesh (CSISA-BD).



Md. Harunur Rashid, cropping system specialist, and Debabrata Mahalder, agriculture development officer of CSISA-BD's Khulna Hub, facilitated the event.


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