IRRI team bags top research award

LOS BAÑOS, Laguna — For the third consecutive year, researchers here bagged the world’s most prestigious award for a scientific support team in publicly funded agricultural research.

This year’s winners were responsible for maintaining and making accessible to farmers, plant breeders and other scientists the world’s most comprehensive collection of rice genetic resources — about 110,000 samples of traditional and modern varieties of cultivated rice, as well as wild species.

The award was announced last Oct. 29 at the annual general meeting of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which each year presents the CGIAR Excellence in Science Awards, in Nairobi, Kenya.

The CGIAR is an association of public and private donor agencies that support 16 international agricultural research centers, called Future Harvest Centers, strategically located in various parts of the globe. One of the CGIAR centers is the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) here.

The winning team is composed of 33 Filipino scientists working in the IRRI Genetic Resources Center, which manages the International Rice Genebank.

The researchers play a central role in the center’s scientific advances in the conservation and use of rice genetic resources.

"We aim to protect traditional varieties of rice so that they can be used to help poor rice farmers throughout the world," said GRC head Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton.

"We are open to any nation, including those which do not deposit their traditional varieties with us, provided they agree not to infringe on the sovereign rights of nations over their biodiversity," he added.

The CGIAR, in its recent external review, cited the rice genebank as the "best in the CGIAR system" and "a model for others to emulate."