Philippines

Early start this morning, left the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) at 4.30am after realising last night that the proposed time of 8am wasn't going to get us to the Corregidor Island ferry terminal by 7am.

Early starts are a killer !

 Corregidor Island was under US rule during the early part of the 19th century. The Island was a strategic defense post from the invading Japanese during WW2.
In 1942,General Douglas Macarthur was ordered by the US president to leave the Philippines and go to Darwin to coordinate the defense of Australia.
 It would be 3 years before the US are able to reoccupy the Island. The remains of the gun installations are still there as are the ruins of barracks and the entire armed forces community.
The Island took a pounding over several years as the Japanese first captured it and then as the US tried to reclaim it numerous times before being successful. The scars are still evident in the landscape with holes everywhere from bombs exploded, not to mention the scrapnul ??? scars on the concrete bunkers and the restored guns and mortars.

This was a brilliant day and although we all struggled with the heat, we were able to relax and take in some local history at the same time.

Remains of Barricks on Corregidor Island

Monday 3 June and we  are at IRRI, International Rice Research Institute, talking to staff members James Quilty and Leigh Vial.

IRRI Rice Research has expertise and facilities that would be the envy of any research institution, and is firmly focused on feeding the world. They are working on the worlds largest collection of rice varieties, some 117,000, and still counting, all in cold storage for the future.

 They are working hard at mapping Rice genotypes of many of these varieties, this will allow fast-tracking the breeding of new varieties , cutting the time taken to produce a new variety by at least half, but also to select for traits as required. New varieties could be ready to go commercially in as little as 5 years.

They are also focused on education, forming the science partnership, GRISP, offering 200 places annually to students from all over the world, the opportunity to study, and work with their scientists. IRRI also work extensively with farmers, extension people in the  Philippines, as well as people from other countries in an effort to increase world Rice production in a sustainable way.

 Their breeders are interested in creating a C4 type Rice, basically a rice variety with the vigor of a corn plant. They are looking at the possibility of developing a variety with higher Iron levels, and higher vitamin levels to assist in providing an easy way to increase the health of all those who consume rice.  All geared to increasing the production of Rice to feed the growing world population.

World demand for Rice is expected to increase 2% per year and 3 Billion people rely on Rice for their diet. The world area planted to Rice has stabilised and yields are not increasing quickly enough to meet forecast world demand.

We also visited their great Rice Museum which maps out the history of Rice and has a large display of farming practices, tools, from the  Philippines.

 The day started with a presentation by Duncan Mackintosh, Development directer, and Liegh Vial, Head of the experiment station and former Nuffield Scholar, 2008.



We then were taken on a tour by James McQuilty, research scientist of the station. 1st stop was a look at the oldest trails, continuous rice for 52 years, with out any nitrogen fert for that time. Not their normal practice, but an interesting comparison to other trials. From there we looked at trials designed to break the continuous rice cropping cycle, with alternate crops, corn, mung beans etc, in an effort to prove to local farmers that they could be more productive and profitable.

We then saw their world wide collection of wild rice, which showed graphically, the amount of variation of rice types from around the world.

After lunch we visited the International Rice Genebank, were we where shown how they prepare grain for long term storage, at low temp, for 100 years or more, to safeguard the survival of varieties.

From there we went to the labs, and discussed how, using Molecular markers, they map the geneotypes of a variety, and how that they can identify traits, that they can transfer to a new variety, to enhance the new variety, speeding up the selection process of new varieties.

We finished the day looking at their rice Museum, with an interesting display of old farming practices/tools from the Philippines and China, interesting Rice products, and a fantastic display of birds that frequent rice paddies from around the world.