Rice is a cereal grain and in its domesticated form is the staple food of over half of the world's population, particularly in Asia and Africa. Rice is the seed of the grass species Oryza sativa —or, much less commonly, Oryza glaberrima. Asian rice was domesticated in China some 13,500 to 8,200 years ago; African rice was domesticated in Africa about 3,000 years ago. Rice has become commonplace in many cultures worldwide; in 2021, 787 million tons were produced, placing it fourth after sugarcane, maize, and wheat. Only some 8% of rice is traded internationally. China, India, and Indonesia are the largest consumers of rice. A substantial amount of the rice produced in developing nations is lost after harvest through factors such as poor transport and storage. Rice yields can be reduced by pests including insects, rodents, and birds, as well as by weeds, and by diseases such as rice blast. Traditional rice polycultures such as rice-duck farming, and modern integrated pest management seek to control damage from pests in a sustainable way.
Golden rice is a variety of rice produced through genetic engineering to biosynthesize beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A, in the edible parts of the rice. It is intended to produce a fortified food to be grown and consumed in areas with a shortage of dietary vitamin A. Genetically modified golden rice can produce up to 23 times as much beta-carotene as the original golden rice.
The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is an international agricultural research and training organization with its headquarters in Los Baños, Laguna, in the Philippines, and offices in seventeen countries. IRRI is known for its work in developing rice varieties that contributed to the Green Revolution in the 1960s which preempted the famine in Asia.
Bharat Ratna Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan was an Indian agronomist, agricultural scientist, geneticist, administrator and humanitarian. Swaminathan was a global leader of the green revolution. He has been called the main architect of the green revolution in India for his leadership and role in introducing and further developing high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice.
The University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) is a public university located in Ubungo District, Dar es Salaam Region, Tanzania. It was established in 1961 as an affiliate college of the University of London. The university became an affiliate of the University of East Africa (UEA) in 1963, shortly after Tanzania gained its independence from the United Kingdom. In 1970, UEA split into three independent universities: Makerere University in Uganda, the University of Nairobi in Kenya, and the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
Dame Katharine Mary Barker is a British economist. She is principally noted for her role at the Bank of England and for advising the British government on social issues such as housing and health care.
Hybrid rice is a type of Asian rice that has been crossbred from two very different parent varieties. As with other types of hybrids, hybrid rice typically displays heterosis or "hybrid vigor", so when grown under the same conditions as comparable purebred rice varieties, it can produce up to 30% more yield. To produce hybrid seeds in large quantity, a purebred sterile rice variety is fertilized with fertile pollen from a different variety. High-yield crops, including hybrid rice, are one of the most important tools for combatting worldwide food crises.
Võ Tòng Xuân was a Vietnamese agricultural expert who was provost of Tân Tạo University (TTU), rector of An Giang University (AGU) and vice rector of Can Tho University. He was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation from 2002 until 2010.
Gurdev Singh Khush is an Agronomist and Geneticist who, along with mentor Henry Beachell, received the 1996 World Food Prize for his achievements in enlarging and improving the global supply of rice during a time of exponential population growth.
George Barnabas Kirya, MBChB, MMed, MSc, Dip.Bact., LLD (Honorary), is a Ugandan physician, academic, microbiologist, politician, and diplomat. He served as the chairman of the Uganda Health Services Commission from 2007 to 2012. Previously, from 1997 until 2003, he served as Uganda's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.
Perennial rice are varieties of long-lived rice that are capable of regrowing season after season without reseeding; they are being developed by plant geneticists at several institutions. Although these varieties are genetically distinct and will be adapted for different climates and cropping systems, their lifespan is so different from other kinds of rice that they are collectively called perennial rice. Perennial rice—like many other perennial plants—can spread by horizontal stems below or just above the surface of the soil but they also reproduce sexually by producing flowers, pollen and seeds. As with any other grain crop, it is the seeds that are harvested and eaten by humans.
Zeba Islam Seraj is a Bangladeshi scientist known for her research in developing salt-tolerant rice varieties suitable for growth in the coastal areas of Bangladesh. She is currently a professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Dhaka.
Pamela Christine Ronald is an American plant pathologist and geneticist. She is a professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and conducts research at the Genome Center at the University of California, Davis and a member of the Innovative Genomics Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. She also serves as Director of Grass Genetics at the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, California. In 2018 she served as a visiting professor at Stanford University in the Center on Food Security and the Environment.
The Central Soil Salinity Research Institute (CSSRI) is an autonomous institute of higher learning, established under the umbrella of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) by the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India for advanced research in the field of soil sciences. The institute is located on Kachawa Road in Karnal, in the state of Haryana, 125 km (78 mi) from the Indian capital of New Delhi.
Ebrahimali Abubacker Siddiq is an Indian agricultural scientist, whose research in genetics and plant breeding is reported to have assisted in the development of various high-yielding rice varieties such as dwarf basmati and hybrid rice. The government of India honoured Siddiq in 2011 with the fourth-highest civilian award of Padma Shri.
Dilbagh Singh Athwal was an Indian-American geneticist, plant breeder and agriculturist, known to have conducted pioneering research in plant breeding. He was a professor and the Head of the Department of Plant Breeding at Punjab Agricultural University and an associate of Norman Borlaug, a renowned biologist and Nobel Laureate, with whom he has collaborated for the introduction of high-yielding dwarf varieties of wheat.
Swapan Kumar Datta is a (Professor) of rice biotechnology who focuses on genetic engineering of Indica rice. Datta has demonstrated the development of genetically engineered Indica rice from protoplast derived from haploid embryogenic cell suspension culture. Golden Indica Rice with enriched Provitamin A and Ferritin rice with high iron content were developed by his group with a vision to meet the challenges of malnutrition in developing countries. Datta has been named as one among the top 25 Indian scientists from all fields of science by India Today.
IR8 is a high-yielding semi-dwarf rice variety developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the early 1960s. It was developed by an IRRI team consisting of Peter Jennings, Hank Beachell, Akira Tanaka, T.T. Chang, S.K. De Datta, and Robert Chandler. In November 1966, IR8 was introduced in the Philippines and India. Promoters such as the IRRI and farmer benefactors of IR8 have called it 'miracle rice', and celebrate it for fighting famine. IR8 dramatically increased the yields of Asian rice from 1 or 2 ton per hectare to 4 or 5 tons per hectare. It played a significant part in the Green Revolution.
Papa Abdoulaye SeckFAAS is a Senegalese politician and scholar. He was the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Equipment from 2013 to 2019.
Gelia Tagumpay Castillo was a Filipino sociologist. She specialized in rural sociology and was a pioneer of the concept of participatory development. She was a university professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños. Her 1977 book Beyond Manila examined rural development in the Philippines. She was named a National Scientist of the Philippines in 1999.
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