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Grantee: International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)
August 10, 2010
This grant continues to make steady progress against its key milestones and may be able to reach many more farmers than planned.
Delivering new rice varieties to farmers: This project is on track to exceed its goal of reaching 100,000 African and 300,000 Asian rice farmers with stress-tolerant rice varieties by the end of 2010. By 2017, we expect 20 million farmers, most of whom will be women, to benefit from these new varieties.
Listening to farmers leads to better results: IRRI and its partner in the project, AfricaRice, continue to work closely with farmers through a process called “participatory variety selection” to develop rice varieties that meet their needs. The process has resulted in better varieties. It’s also built awareness and demand from farmers and increased interest and support from governments, which are critical partners in helping make these seeds available to farmers.
Breakthrough science for small farmers: IRRI has made steady progress in developing varieties of rice that can withstand drought, flood, cold, and other stresses. Since the project launch, IRRI has put stricter quality controls on counting improved varieties by considering only those experimental varieties that have higher yields than local commercial varieties. This new classification has reduced the number but increased the quality of new varieties developed under the project. IRRI and AfricaRice have developed and released more than seven stress-tolerant rice varieties in South Asia and five in Africa. Farmers that have adopted salt-tolerant varieties have nearly doubled their annual yields, causing an increase in demand from neighboring farmers. The high demand has resulted in the production of over 4,000 tons of seed of stress-tolerant rice varieties in South Asia. This includes more than 550 tons of seed of the submergence-tolerant variety, Swarna-Sub1, which was released in India in June 2009 and in Bangladesh in March 2010. During 2009, IRRI distributed more than 560 tons of improved rice varieties in target countries in Africa.
Context is key: This grant funds work on two continents with very different contexts. South Asia has good capacity and infrastructure in place to rapidly distribute the varieties developed and plenty of rice scientists who can benefit from IRRI training to help with research. Africa, by contrast, has fewer rice scientists and less infrastructure for rice research. Despite these constraints, IRRI and AfricaRice were able to train 196 of the targeted 225 African scientists in 2009. The project also trained more than 120 technicians in Africa in participatory variety selection and seed production in order to get improved seeds into the hands of farmers.
Standing on others’ shoulders: While this grant’s overall progress has exceeded our expectations, we acknowledge that none of this success would have been possible without the efforts of the many people and organizations that have worked on stress tolerance for years. IRRI has been able to build on a lot of past research and strong partnerships that have enabled the rapid scaling up and impact of this grant.
Learn more about this grant to IRRI.
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