Los Baņos - After more than decade of work, scientists in Asia are confident a new type of rice plant will be able to play a key role in helping to keep the world's poorest and most populous regions well fed and on the road to prosperity.

Researchers at the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), led by the world-renowned rice breeder Gurdev Khush, have spent the past 12 years developing what they call the new plant type (NPT) for irrigated rice fields. Their aim was to completely redesign the rice plant from the roots up, making it higher yielding, more vigorous, and better able to resist pests and diseases without the use of environmentally damaging pesticides.

The final results of the decade-long scientific effort by Dr. Khush and his team were announced at this year's Annual General Meeting of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) held at the World Bank's headquarters in Washington, DC, from 30 October to 1 November. IRRI, along with 15 other Future Harvest research centers spread around the world, is a member of the CGIAR.

In announcing the successful development of the NPT at the CGIAR meeting, Dr. Khush highlighted two factors that were crucial to his research. The first was the willingness of countries to openly share their rice varieties with researchers to allow all rice farmers to benefit, and the second was the committed support of donor nations such as Japan who ensured that he had the funding needed to conclude his work.

It was in 1994 that Time magazine first learned of Dr. Khush's work and labeled it Super Rice, praising it for its potential to alleviate hunger, poverty, and environmental pollution. For many years, such high expectations put great pressure on the IRRI team to achieve the predicted results. Finally, all concerned are confident that they have delivered the goods.

"The latest yield data from 2001 dry season trials in China showed the best-performing NPT line-one of 42 tested-producing a yield advantage over an existing modern rice variety of 1.7 tons per hectare," Dr. Khush said. "Another five lines showed a yield advantage of over one ton per hectare. These varieties also have resistance to some diseases and pests."

That Dr. Khush and his team have been able to successfully re-engineer the rice plant-and so continued to help feed the more than two billion people who depend on rice each and every day-is only half the story.

"When Gurdev Khush first started to develop rice varieties 34 years ago, there were few countries in Asia with the research infrastructure to work with him to adapt new varieties to local conditions," said IRRI Director General Ronald P. Cantrell. "But now, almost every Asian nation has some level of agricultural research capacity."

Because of this, Asian countries have been able to feed their growing populations and, for the most part, maintain peace and stability. "The true Asian miracle through the 1970s and 80s wasn't stunning economic growth. It was keeping people fed and societies relatively stable," Dr. Cantrell said. "And now, with the new plant type ready for farmers' fields, we are hopeful of being able to maintain this level of progress."

Drs. Cantrell and Khush both stressed that this would not have been possible without the development of national research and extension systems in most rice-producing nations. "It's one of the great, untold success stories of many developing nations-their growing capacity in agricultural research," Dr. Cantrell said.

It is also a story reflected in the career of Gurdev Khush. While his name may have passed the lips of only a few, there is no doubt that his handiwork has passed the lips of almost half the planet. "One of the most impressive statements that I've heard made about Dr. Khush's career is the observation that, of the three billion people who probably ate rice today, most are likely to have eaten something Dr. Khush played some role in developing. There can't be many people whose life's work has touched the lives of almost half the planet in such a way," Dr. Cantrell said.

After more than three decades of helping to feed the world, Dr. Khush retired from IRRI in August this year. "He's had an extraordinary career and an extraordinary impact on the lives of hundreds of millions of people," Dr. Cantrell said. "We're especially pleased that he has been able to conclude his career on such a successful note. There's no doubt the NPT will have a major impact on rice production over the next decade, and it's a fitting legacy for Dr. Khush's career."

With the new plant-breeding tools now available, it is unlikely that a similar pioneering process would take 12 years today, but when Dr. Khush started on the NPT late in the 1980s, there were many time-consuming problems to overcome. "The first NPTs failed to deliver the big harvests we expected, because many grains failed to develop," Dr. Khush explained. "We eventually traced these flaws to certain parents and, after many crosses, finally started to get the yields we wanted."

Having developed what could be described as the basic NPT prototype at IRRI's headquarters in the Philippines, Dr. Khush then began sharing his work with fellow researchers in countries such as China. This allowed them to take advantage of all his years of experience, knowledge, and effort as they adapted the NPT to their own conditions, which could be quite different to those of the Philippines.

Rice farmers find the NPT very unlike a traditional rice plant. In addition to having a substantially higher yield and requiring fewer chemicals to protect it from pests and diseases, the plant is markedly different in appearance, with sturdier stems and fewer but much bigger panicles, or heads of grain.

"It's an important step forward in the evolution of the rice plant," Dr. Cantrell said. "It also puts us in a good position regarding future plant-breeding work at IRRI, especially with the development of new research areas such as functional genomics."

Last year's announcement of a draft decoding of the rice genome changed forever the way plant breeders like Dr. Khush can expect to work in the future. "Breeding for important traits such as stress or disease tolerance used to take me many years without any guarantee of success. Now we can expect to do it much more quickly, once we've identified exactly which genes are involved and where they are located," Dr. Khush said. "The future of rice breeding looks very exciting, with tools like functional genomics now so readily available."

"Clearly, what's happening now, with the retirement of Dr. Khush and the development of functional genomics, is not just a generational transition, but also a scientific one," Dr. Cantrell said. "The achievements of Dr. Khush and his colleagues, especially regarding the NPT, have been very impressive. But like most plant breeders, we're even more excited about the potential of the future."

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 by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an association of public and private donor agencies.

For more information, visit the websites of CGIAR (www.cgiar.org) or Future Harvest (www.futureharvest.org). 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.

For additional information, contact Duncan Macintosh
IRRI
DAPO Box 7777
Metro Manila, Philippines
telephone (63-2) 845-0563 or (63-2) 844-3351 to 53
fax: (63-2) 891-1292 or (63-2) 845-0606
email: d.macintosh@cgiar.org
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