In 1962, scientists at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) debated the cause of low and stagnant rice yields in the tropics: was it variety or crop management? This debate ended with the release of the semidwarf IR8 in 1966, initiating the Green Revolution. The same variety, in the same year, extended this revolution to Latin America, beginning in Colombia and spreading rapidly through the tropics and later to the temperate areas.
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The Green Revolution in rice has been documented throughout much of Asia, but few think of Vietnam in the 1960s and ‘70s as a “Green Revolution country.” That’s because IR8 arrived at the height of a brutal war that overshadowed an agricultural transformation in the countryside. Rice means life itself in Vietnam, and was used both as a weapon and as a tool for peace. I have strong memories of the war: Huey choppers, mortars, ambushes, and needless deaths. But I also remember Honda Rice. -- Tom Hargrove, August 2006
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Peter Jennings, the International Rice Research Institute’s first rice breeder (1961-67), with a long career in Latin America after his work in Asia, kicks off this historic series with a singular wit. He played a major role in the development of IR8, the rice variety that would ultimately change the face of agriculture across Asia. He reminisced on a warm, muggy day (20 July 2007) at his home in Gainesville, Florida. Here are edited highlights of the interview.
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Forty years ago, a remarkable rice-breeding project culminated in the release of a rice variety under an unremarkable name — IR8. This is the story of the research that would ultimately change the face of agriculture across Asia.
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Anyone worried about the impacts of trade liberalization on developing-country rice sectors should take a close look at Mexico’s experience and learn from a recent campaign—led by the Mexican Rice Council and its partners—to revive national production. That may sound like odd advice. After all, Mexico is not widely perceived as being strong on rice—a distinction that in Latin America goes instead to Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and others.
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A while back, I read an interesting story extolling the merits of the new flood-tolerant rice, Swarna-Sub1, in the newsletter of the Stress-Tolerant Rice for Africa and South Asia (STRASA) project. The author, Manzoor Hussain Dar, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) senior associate scientist based in India, included two photos of the same farmer, Nekkanti Subba Rao, in the same field on his Andhra Pradesh farm.
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Dr. Robert Chandler was appointed by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations to be IRRI’s first director general and charged with a mission to develop higher-yielding rice varieties in the face of famine in Asia. In the final analysis, he was certainly the right person at the right place and right time to get the ball rolling for rice research in the early 1960s.
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This year, 2016, IRRI is observing and celebrating the 50th anniversary of the release of IR8, the first semidwarf rice variety that would ultimately change the face of agriculture across Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere. However, it is also the golden anniversary of the historic arrival of the first and only U.S. president, Lyndon Johnson, who visited the institute on 26 October 1966. He came to see—and find out more about—this miracle rice called IR8.
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A QTL is a segment of an organism’s DNA that contains a gene or genes linked to a particular trait. In the rice plant, for example, it can control height, built-in resistance to a particular disease, or the ability to produce more grain yield. It is within this complex inner universe of genes and DNA strands where Shalabh Dixit works in his role as a scientist at the International Rice Research Institute’s (IRRI) Plant Breeding Division. He searches for untapped genetic materials to develop new rice varieties that are tougher and more productive.
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