News

To foster open communication, transparency, and collaborative learning across IRRI’s research groups, the Rice Breeding Innovation (RBI) Platform has initiated a series of field visits at the IRRI Headquarters starting this cropping season. 

Researchers and staff from all research platforms-Rice Breeding Innovation, Integrative Research Support and Sustainable Impact through Rice Based Systems were invited to participate in field visits to learn about the research programs of each RBI research unit. The tour participants visit field trials, greenhouse experiments and laboratory activities aiming to improve understanding of RBI platform priorities and activities, interaction among research teams and understand research operations.

Dr. Hans Bhardwaj, RBI Platform Leader emphasized the importance of partnership and collaboration in becoming a forward looking organization with a shared and common mission of the plant breeding organization. 

“We have made significant progress in breaking down the organizational silos and making the RBI platform work more and more as an unified product development organization engaged in upstream discovery research to downstream product development, delivery and dissemination (seed system) activities under the umbrella of One Rice breeding strategy,” he said. 

“The tours are open for the leadership teams and researchers from all the  platforms. This way we learn from each other and effectively deliver on the common IRRI's mission,” said Dr. Parthiban Thathapalli Prakash, Breeding optimization scientist and Medium maturity rice breeder and coordinator of the field tours.

Participants visited the early maturity facilities headed by Dr. Shalabh Dixit on 5 September followed by the hybrid program (Dr. Jauhar Ali) and the late maturity (Dr. Waseem Hussain) last 14 and 23 September, respectively.  Dr. Suresh Kadaru of the medium maturity program hosted the field tour on 29 September..

This field visits initiative at the IRRI Headquarter will be replicated across regional breeding hubs in  South Asia, South East Asia and Africa this year.  It will include joint visits at IRRI's regional breeding hubs and to the select NARES partners’ sites to observe the yield trials and trait phenotyping activities being carried out. 

For more information, please send an email to  Dr. Parthiban Thathapalli Prakash at p.prakash@irri.org.