IRRI's achievements & successes

Hybrid rice already significantly contributing to Asian agriculture

Hybrid rice technology developed at IRRI has clearly demonstrated yields that are 1–1.5 tons per hectare higher than modern inbred varieties in farmers’ tropical rice fields in such countries as India, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. During 2003, the area under rice hybrids increased to 280,000 hectares in India, 100,000 in the Philippines, and 600,000 in Vietnam, increases of 40, 170, and 25%, respectively. Bangladesh and Indonesia have started commercializing this technology to cover about 10,000 and 5,000 hectares, respectively.

Researchers have found the productivity of rice hybrids to be higher than that of inbred rice varieties by 5–10 kilograms per day per hectare. Hybrids are also showing better adaptability than inbreds under salinity-prone irrigated areas and in alternate wetting-and-drying irrigated systems, which save significant amounts of water.

Hybrid seeds planted on about 1 million hectares in 2003 amounted to a about 20,000 tons (worth US$40 million at $2 per kilogram), primarily produced by the private sector. Thus, this technology has contributed to the development of a private seed industry in Asia.

Since it takes 50 person-days of incremental labor per hectare to produce F1 seeds at a yield of 1 ton per hectare, an estimated 1 million days of additional employment opportunities were generated. With an average of at least 1 ton per hectare of additional yield from hybrids, the 1 million hectares planted to them helped produce 1 million tons of additional rice valued at more than US$120 million.

So, even though it is still in an early phase of development and use, hybrid rice is already contributing considerably toward increasing rice production, productivity per day, farmers’ income, private seed industry development, and rural employment in Asia.