Rice Knowledge Bank and the IRRC: bringing science to rice farmers

More than 2.7 billion people rely on rice as their main source of food. (Photo by R. Panaligan)

Across Asia, rice has a crucial role to play in achieving the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Improvements in rice farming will help not only farmers, farm workers, and their families but also the millions of poor people who are totally dependent on rice.

An increase in rice production is strongly needed, and it should come primarily from higher yields from existing rice fields in the irrigated and favorable rainfed lowland ecosystems, as opportunities to increase rice planting area are limited. It is even more difficult to achieve higher rice yields in less favorable agricultural environments. Irrigated rice accounts for about 50% of the global rice area and about 75% of the total world rice production, and is cultivated on about 135 million hectares of harvested rice area. It produces more than 530 million tons of paddy rice every year.

The good news is that a wealth of valuable knowledge on rice farming exists from the research efforts of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and its partners. However, if technologies developed by rice research are not effectively delivered to farmers, their livelihoods are unlikely to improve. The challenge is to move this research-based rice farming knowledge from the research centers to the doorsteps of rice farmers across Asia.

Two agents working hand in hand in bridging the research-extension gap are the Irrigated Rice Research Consortium (IRRC) and the Rice Knowledge Bank (RKB). All of IRRI’s research findings that are directly relevant to the extension community are “deposited” in the RKB, much like a real bank’s functions. These research findings are supplemented with training and support knowledge that extension agents need to effectively transfer new technologies to farmers.

IRRI continues its efforts to better assemble and package knowledge and training on each validated technology around themes that respond to farmers’ needs. Information is now being organized using the seed-to-seed cycle.

This cycle provides researchers and extension specialists with an excellent one-stop shop to help them support farmers by

1. Designing, conducting, and reporting farmer participatory research—much development in agriculture depends on local research and its on-farm validation.
2. Raising awareness on success cases of up-scaling and the skills required.
3. Strengthening their professional skills: a range of computer-based courses are provided, which increase the capacity of officers to manage their time, conduct meetings, and design projects.

In addition, the RKB also contains English language support in the form of a 120-lesson introductory course that teaches effective use of English.

The RKB not only includes IRRI research results but also encourages countries to showcase their local research findings, adapt research knowledge from IRRI for their own situation, or translate IRRI knowledge into their own languages. Countries outside Asia, such as several in Africa, have also found IRRI’s validated research-based technologies useful.

The RKB is being promoted widely to all extension agencies, including government agencies, nongovernment organizations, the private sector, and universities. In addition to the extension audience reached in many countries, masteral and PhD scholars at IRRI and from Asia’s universities and agricultural colleges use the knowledge and training from the RKB to better equip themselves as they continue studies on improving rice research and rice farming. The IRRC, at the same time, also links with country partners to share promising rice-growing technologies and strengthen their capacities. The Consortium also sponsors students and researchers to attend training courses, thus developing new networks, which is crucial to an effective organization.

Engr. Eugene Castro (standing), an associate scientist at the IRRI Training Center, is part of a team that manages the Rice Knowledge Bank.

More than 2.7 billion rice farmers and consumers depend on the sustainable productivity of the irrigated rice ecosystem for their supply of food. And they require information on state-of-the-art technologies so that they can increase their efficiency in rice production. With the partnership between the RKB and the IRRC, farmers can now access this valuable information.

The RKB is a dynamic, living “document” that all agents working in extension can use as their “first port of call” when seeking to provide rice farmers with information. The RKB, together with the IRRC, will continue to deliver relevant knowledge and associated training to farmers through as many channels as possible so that, as farmers encounter problems, help can be literally just a mouse click away. Through the RKB and the research partnerships between IRRI-IRRC and its collaborators, the essential knowledge needed to improve rice farming is being made available by successfully bridging the research-extension interface.

David Shires (d.shires@cgiar.org), graphics by Lauro Atienza

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