News

The Cross Cutting Operations (CCO) of the Breeding Operations (BO) Unit organized the BO-CCO Planning Workshop for 2023 from 12 to 13 December 2022 at the IRRI Guesthouse. It was participated by the research managers and service team leaders from CCO, Zeigler Experiment Station (ZES), IRRI Service Laboratories (ISL), Finance team, and breeders’ representatives. A sit-in guest, Challa Venkateshwarlu, in-charge of the Breeding Network in IRRI Hyderabad also finished the 2-day workshop and established contact with the research managers and lead supervisors.   

This 2-day workshop aimed to develop and progress the Seed-to-Seed Service Package (S2SP) by outlining the baseline of the whole process flow and tailor fit a tool or app for the Enterprise Breeding System (EBS)/OCS for deployment of this service package. The Breeding Operations Manager helped set the direction of service development using the define, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC) method of Lean Sigma. 

Overviews on research support of ZES, Analytical Services Laboratory (ASL), and Genotyping Services Laboratory (GSL) were presented by representing research manager. A review presentation on the OneRice Breeding Strategy was presented by guest breeder Parthiban Prakash, while the importance of using trait markers (MAS) and complete genome mapping (1K RICA) was presented by IRRI’s John Platten. Guest participant Annabel Valdenarro and her team also presented the basics and overview on the Full Cost Recovery (FCR) model. An initial brainstorming on the financial aspect for the S2SP concerning operational expenses and recovery were deliberated positively by the team. Gaps and challenges, and mitigation options were identified collectively by the team and were all captured in the Gantt Chart for person-in-charge assignment and timeline to track any development and effectiveness of the action plan for the package to proceed and be implemented before the end of 2023.