Making waves again

Dr. Achim Dobermann is back. The new leader of the International Rice Research Institute’s (IRRI) Program 2 (Sustaining Productivity in Intensive Rice-based Systems) first stepped onto the lush green IRRI campus way back 1992 as a soil scientist with the Soil and Water Sciences Division. From 1997 to 2000, he led the Reversing Trends of Declining Productivity (RTDP) Work Group during the Irrigated Rice Research Consortium’s (IRRC) Phase 2. Now, he’s back in IRRI, undertaking his first major administrative position with the IRRC under his wing.

“I gained much experience in the late 1990s by leading the “Mega Project” in collaboration with many partners in Asia (as RTDP was known for), which will be of great benefit for my new role as program leader,” Dr. Dobermann says. He is also involved in the IRRI-CIMMYT Alliance Project on Intensive Production Systems in Asia.

Site-specific nutrient management (SSNM) resulted from the initial RTDP research conducted since the mid-1990s. Dr. Dobermann published the basic concept for SSNM in 1995 and became RTDP coordinator in 1997. He was at the forefront of this now successful IRRC technology, and he knew right then they were doing something right. “It was in 1997 while working in farmers’ fields that we began to realize that this could actually work,” he recalls. “Before that, we did a lot of groundwork and developed the concept, and it all seemed to make theoretical sense. But unless you start applying new scientific concepts and tools in farmers’ fields, you cannot be sure. And you need to be willing to recognize your own mistakes and learn from them.”

In their first attempt, half of the SSNM trials worked while the other half showed no advantages or were almost disastrous. But his team and collaborators eventually learned how to do it right. He particularly remembers the first SSNM plots in Tamil Nadu, India, which stood out from the surrounding farmers’ fields with their lush green canopy, but because of that also attracted all the leaffolders from the surrounding fields. They lost a lot of yield to pests, but they also saw the potential to increase yield by just changing nutrient management.

When he left IRRI in 2000, 3 years of SSNM research in farmers’ fields had been completed and the benefits became clear and consistent, but researchers did not have a clear concept on how to disseminate the approach to many farmers. “I am very pleased with the achievements of the IRRC Productivity and Sustainability Work Group, which has continued the work on SSNM since 2000. They have greatly improved and simplified the approach into a concept for local adoption and adaptation, but still based on the same principles we established in the early days,” he says. “They’ve taken it much further than I expected and for that I’m very grateful to Drs. Roland Buresh and Christian Witt and all the national researchers participating in the IRRC. I’m also very pleased to now have the opportunity again to visit many of them and see the progress being made first hand.”

In fact, Dr. Dobermann considers his work on SSNM as the most gratifying of all his work experiences. In recent years, the SSNM concept has been applied to crops such as maize, wheat, cassava, and even eucalyptus in many countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The work done by the PSWG is one of the reasons why he feels the strong need to continue the IRRC into a fourth phase after December 2008. He says the IRRC has so many directions to go, and its biggest need is to bring different disciplines together to empower farmers with knowledge and management concepts for what he calls “ecological intensification of rice production systems.” He knows that it is a great challenge and there is no single recipe but he believes the IRRC is going in the right direction. He also sees the IRRC tackling issues on diversification of cropping systems in Asia, and even the potential for new postharvest activities to look into options for generating bio-energy from rice straw.

With all the ideas churning in his head, one would guess that Achim Dobermann doesn’t sleep at all. On the contrary, he doesn’t believe in staying long hours in the office. He needs and creates his free time, he says, which he spends doing sports, reading history, biographies, or scientific papers, and listening to his substantial music collection. He used to play soccer, even during the IRRI sportsfest, but knee surgery ended his soccer career. This year, he will start scuba-diving again, which he is excited about since he hasn’t practiced it in 7 years.

His family is still based in the U.S., where, until recently, he worked as a professor of soil science and nutrient management at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. But, come next year, his daughter, Darja, 18, will go to college and his wife, Ilwa, and son, Tim, 15, will join him here in IRRI. “It’s difficult to be separated from your family for nearly a year, but we had no other choice and I look forward for them to join me and our old and new friends at IRRI.”

While he is still adjusting to being away from his family, when it comes to work, he is happy and content. “When I was younger, I never expected to become a scientist; neither did I expect to become a scientist working on soils and rice,” he says. “Every young child at some point thinks ‘I want to become an astronaut or doctor or lawyer.’ I cannot remember if I ever had such ideas. I grew up in a rural environment, so a profession related to agriculture was pretty much an expected decision. Scientists working in agricultural science have a huge responsibility for the world. To be part of that and have the ability to contribute to changing this world, I think there’s nothing more enjoyable.”

Trina Mendoza (t.mendoza@cgiar.org)

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