Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Intellectual property rights Vs Information rights: where two frontiers meet



Dear All,

I agree with you all that we had an exciting week with the GRiSP annual review. We had serious time twitting from event hall. More senses were alert than usual. We had to listen keenly, paraphrase clearly, type correctly, and most importantly tweet before anyone else. Catharsis was higher than in a competition. First half of the first day I was lost. I could not understand the speakers completely. And I judged myself several times if I was wasting my time doing things other than listening. In the afternoon I recovered. Since second day, I realized I was using more parts of my brain more efficiently than ever before. It was a good brain-training for me. 

At times I felt it was just the twitters who were aware of the online twitting. Later, I realized many people were aware that real time twitting and blogging was going on. May be they did not want to show online presence. That inspired me.  When I saw you with phones, laptops and camera, I felt I was not an exception in the room. 

Were you benefited?
I was most benefited on first two days when there were concurrent sessions and online feeds by the live bloggers from other room were easy to catch and get updated. I did not miss the other events- the concurrent ones especially.



On the underprivileged segment of what's defined as the world's poor, isn't it that rice quantity comes first before quality? 

 farmers now directly sell their produce in millers and wholesale markets, as in  and 

In South America, breeders aim for 55% head rice yield. Its definition here:

"We should talk about SHAREholders, instead of stakeholders" -Mr Moderator quotes AfricaRice DG. 

as  puts it in her blog entry, rice science is in good hands with these awesome, young scientists involved in 

 Pup1 gene confers tolerance to nutrient starvation and is present in most rainfed rice varieties

RT  Rice knowledge bank is huge resource, well validated by IRRI, but only 23% return users.  






IR64 was Tungro resistant when released, due to GLH resistance, has broken down. -IR Choi  

My blog post for today: Spotlight falls on young (or early-career) scientists | 



Acquiring the DNA fingerprints of rice varieties will avoid non-useful crosses. -Eero Nissila on GRiSP2012 

"Partnerships take time to develop. It has to be a win-win situation and must have blending." - Noel Magor reviews the GRiSP T6. 




There is negative effect from heat stress on panicle meristem development. - Sigid Heuer 
Tri-center collaboration between IRRI, CIAT, and IWMI being explored in Laos. -Ben Samson 

RT : Philippine gov't is promoting food diversification as part of its goal to attain rice self-sufficiency. 


Ayus a, cant go to on-going  but am appreciating to at  's efforts. Kaya nyo yan!

 Achim Dobermann: The small farmer is our biggest problem and our biggest opportunity. -- Rochie Cuevas ()

Final wrap-up session. Overviews of rice res for Africa, Latin America, Asia and all res by France and Japan. Info overload! 



Where two frontiers meet
If intellectual property rights (IPR) and information right (IR) meet anywhere, it was in our blogging and twitting. Most of us talk about IPR, and have developed a sort of fear and an assurance that there is a system.  But we don't see any presence of regulating bodies either campaigning awareness nor disciplining.  There has been no remarkable case worth an example of IPR issue. But we cannot expect this static situation for good. Now I feel, we should intentionally tweet more sensitive results: to get attention of the people who should caution and be cautious of the IPR issues. Even if we get into trouble, we can come out quite easily because, we can turn off  our accounts and set our blogs to private views only. By this we offer hot news and events, and prick every one's ears to be cautious.

Now we are one step ahead in this field of real time twitting. Is it possible to find one protegee each to transfer the knowledge gained and increase the circle of like minded enthusiasts of twitter generation.  
Thanks

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 9:09 AM, Cindy Llorente wrote:
I'm sharing the same sentiments as well.
We definitely enjoyed the experience. Salamat ng marami din! :)



On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 9:05 AM, Manuel Marcaida wrote:

The pleasure's all mine. Thanks for the opportunity. It was a good time of learning and sharing, and a fun listening exercise too. :)

Looking forward to participating again in another IRRI event.

Cheers,

Man


On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 4:30 PM, Sophie Clayton  wrote:

Dear all,
I just wanted to drop you a line to say a super big thanks for your tweeting efforts during the GRiSP week. You successfully engaged some external participants and encouraged a few other local participants to tweet and engage too. 

We are hoping to run some analytics on the IRRI web site to see if it affected traffic to irri.org at all. However, the main point was to generate a conversation and encourage followers. I had some positive feedback which suggested people enjoyed your tweets and found them easier to follow than the full presentations because you did the hard work in distilling the information into something short and easy to understand. So congratulations - I hope we can have an even bigger crew, and promote it more at the youth science conference. 

Regards, 

Sophie

Monday, October 8, 2012

CCARA project- K. Hayashi

Climate change adoptation in rainfed rice areas (CCARA)
There are two ways to adapt to climate change.
1. Progressive climate change for future farming and flood system

2. Managing risk from climate variation




Dr Ismail: Flood and flood prone areas

Highly productive regions of the world, have high population and are prone to flooding.

The start of research on submergence started in 1970s and Sub1 discovered in 2000s.



Breeding for tolerance to stagnant floods.
Numerous salt tolerant varieties developed at IRRI.




















Amelia Henry: Bringing Drought under control





Multiple stresses rice in drought prone area. Interesting: Indonesia is wet, yet there is drought.

Release of drought tolerant varieties.
All lines for release pass through diseases tolerance test.




























Sigrid Heuer: QTLs and Genes for heat tolerance

QTLs for heat tolerance found in chromosome 1 and 4. Tolerance genes from N22 cloned, transformed into IR64. Transcriptome sequencing and metabolomics analysis going on.


Questions from the floor:

Dr J.K. Ladha questioning Sigrid


As always, Dr Arvind Kumar has many questions. 

CLIMATE CHANGE

Introduction by T.P. Tuang


Introduction on the work on Climate change in South east asia.- R. Wassmann



The role of climate change research with IRRI's strategic plan.

OZONE layer recovering.

Change in concept: It was the study of climate before 1990. After 1990s its climate change.
Increase in night temperature does not allow rice to produce more. For 1 degree increase in night temperature, the yield decreases by 10%.  The situation is worse when the increase in temperature is surng the ripening time. Asiaflux, (Irri Flux research)

Frontier project:: C4 Rice, Rice and changing climate are going on well.

Seven modules of climate change:  There is rice and climate change consortium.







Challenges:


Krishna J. When does a temperature stressed rice flower.

Which plant has higher sterility? - a shaded or unshaded. Of course unshaded.






\

MET: Multi Environment varietal Testing- Ed Redona

4 locations in philippines chosen for the trials: Isabela, Munoz, Laguna and Agusasn del Norte [2011]
2012- fifth site added: Ubay, Bohol, 6th site Cotabato. Outside Philippines in Srilanka, Vietnam. Details of MEt is in  MET website. IRRI has 11 groups and PhilRice has 6 groups.



Ed Redona: sharing his MET results



Audience attracted to Redona's presentation.

Nolie Vera Cruz: Where are the valuable rice traits



The secrets of  Bacterial blight, Blast, Sheath blight, Rice tungro Virus are no longer secret. Combat strategies are ready against them.

John Damien Platten: How much salt do you need?

Grow Sub1 lines: reduce replanting, get high yield..


Anerobic germination (AG): 2 QTLs found.
Ten Sub1 varieties are being evaluated.

Deep water rice survive better, but they have low yield and lodge.
Salt stress candidate genes were identified using Whole genome sequencing  + iSeq QTL.

Amelia Henry on drought tolerant rice.

At least 3 major drought yield QTL with multiple genetic background effect identified and characterized.
Heat tolerance during flowering stage: Screening the effect of heat in different stages. Different mapping population are being generated.

Cold tolerant lines:
Temperate rice research consortium [TRCC] is in existance.



Amelia Henry 

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Bert Collard and Kshirod K Jena irrigate the breeding programs

Bert Collard: NSIC Rc238 released in 2011: high yielding and aromatic.

Change is not for the sake of change only.
IRRI is undergoing a major changes. the driving force is " Full Cost Recovery".
In future all the new varieties will have Sub 1 gene as default. Rice with Sub1 gene is submergence tolerance.
To broaden genetic base, more researches are needed.
New improved cropping system is necessary: Direct seeding, Alternate wetting and drying, Season and regional specificity.
Works ahead: Select for specific traits- sub 1, super earliness; quickly move to multi location site testing.

Flow of works

....................

KK Jena: Increasing yield potential in rice using genomic and physiological approaches.

Yield growth of rice has fallen by 0.2 % in last two decades. We need to increase yield potential by 0.6% every year.




Genes cloned for plant architecture [I believe there is no IP issue associated with this information]











HYBRID RICE : Fangming Xie




Hybrid rice is grown in 21.7 million hectares worldwide, of this 17 million hectares in China only. Green super rice hybrids for both rain-fed and irrigated lowland. 
Future plan: Combine all biotic and abiotic stress tolerant genes 


















Are we eating healthier rice in future? - Ask Gerard Berry

Where is golden rice?
All requirement for the release of Golden rice is completed. Now moving  from contained/confined to full field trials in Philippines. 


Completion of confined trials in Bangladesh and Indonesia. Community efficacy trail is complete in Philippines.

HIGH ZINC RICE: For Bangladesh and E/S India.
Progress: Recombinant inbred lines (RIL) and double haploid lines (DH) were screened in IRRI green houses. and promising lines found. 23 candidate genes from direct association mapping are under observation.

In Future:  Basically the test of Genotype Vs Environment test. Most important is to select those lines which are high zinc but do not uptake Zinc.

A large scale production of  high Zinc and control rice for human bio-efficacy study is going on.

HIGH IRON RICE

Ferritin and nicotinamine  synthase   Some lines combined lines are necessary in soybean and rice. Boavailability assey in poultry will be conducted in Cornell University.


Amelia Henry, Arvind Kumar, Bas Bouman, Paul Quick, Balram Marathi  questioned Barry.

A Clarification: We are not producing Vitamin A but  a precursor of Vitamin A.




Eero Nissila opens the afternoon session

Where we will be in future.
Accelerating the development, delivery and adoption of improved rice varieties. 






Cross-Cutting research across product lines and themes

Sigrid Heuer explained about the discovery Pup1 gene and status beyond the discovery. She briefed on the nutrient use efficiency.



Steve Klassen  highlights about the advanced phenotyping and modernized field phenotyping.

Shanta Karki: Update on engineering of C4 rice

Shanta Karki gives updates about the activities going on in C4 rice center and takes time to explain the update on transgenic lines transformed with C4 photosynthesis genes and transporters.


 
Update: Preparing for prototype.
 

Exploring Grain Quality

Nese Srinivasulu talks on grain quality
 
 



Explains  ways to improve rice grain quality through genetically modified and non GM methods.
 

Tolerance of anaerobic germination(AG) stress

EndangSeptiningsih gives an update on qAG9-2 QTL.



pAG1-D was found expressed in embryo, aleurone, coleoptile and root. Over expression of AG1-D (OEX)was found to confer tolerance.

 

Resistance to TUNGRO Virus

Dr. Il Ryong Choi talks on Tungro virus disease.
The RTSV resistance gene was found in rice Chromosome 7. 
 

 
Many cultivars had the resistant gene. Sasanishiki for example. The gene is not common.
RTBV resistance is a dominant trait ans was found in Chromosome 4.
 

Inez Slamet-Loedin: Traits and gene validation

Inez Slamet-Loedin speaks after a short coffee break.

 Now there are two screens showing the presentation.
 
 
An example of Candidate gene search- using in silico method.
 
 
 
An example of transgenic validation.
 
 

NONOY BANDILLO: MAGIC population- a new genetic resource.

Nonoy, introduced by Dr Hei Lueng,  is the youngest  scientist presenting in the program.

Noynoy explains the MAGIC

The Secrets of MAGIC
 
What does MAGIC mean?

His Supervisor Dr Glen in the audience.
 

 
His friends in the audience, ready to cheer him up.