The IRRI Pioneer Interviews

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The IRRI Pioneer

Interviews

Conducted by Gene Heel


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Preface

Starting with the January-March 2008 issue of Rice Today, the magazine has published 13

excerpts from selected interviews that I have conducted with IRRIs rice pioneers. As one

of the activities to commemorate IRRIs 50th birthday, Ive logged more than 120 hours of

videotaped conversations with more than 60 pioneers, ranging from the Institutes early

researchers, to others recently retired, to researchers spouses and children, to our research

partners, and to the farmers themselves.

This booklet reprints those 13 articles. See the table of contents. Full transcripts of

these interviews and their full video presentations will be placed online at a future date. For

now, numerous clips from these interviews and other historic videos can be found at http://

tinyurl.com/IRRI-pioneers.

I plan to publish more in the future as I sift through the tapes and transcripts and,yes, continue to conduct more interviews because I know Ive left out many key figures

whose stories and insights deserve to be preserved as part of the Institutes rich history and

legacy.

Gene Hettel

Editor-in-chief

Rice Today


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Contents

Luck is the residue of design (Peter Jennings) 1

Reflections of a rice widow (Carolyn Moomaw Wilhelm) 3

The problem solver (Nyle C. Brady) 7

Figures, fake guns, and fund-raising (Kwanchai Gomez) 9

Dedicated scientistsa childs inspiration (Usha Rani Palaniswamy) 13

In the Punjaban outstanding farmer revisited (Sardar Jagjit Singh Hara)15

Challenges for IRRIa cross-section of opinions 17

Rock and rice: the Rockefeller-IRRI biotechnologysaga (Gary Toenniessen) 21

The trouble with you economists (Randy Barker and Bob Herdt) 25

A juggling act: gender barriers and molecular maps (Susan McCouch) 29

Thank you Margaret Thatcher! (Michael Jackson) 33

Its like playing rouletteand you get paid for it! (opinions, ideas, and anecdotes) 37

Reducing pesticide use in Asias rice fields: the job is far from finished (K.L. Heong) 40


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1Rice TodayJanuary-March 2008

THE IRRI PIONEER INTERVIEWS

Luck is the residue of design

GENE

HETTEL

(3)

Conducted by Gene Hettel

A matter of 5 minutes

Istarted graduate school at PurdueUniversity in 1953. I was therealmost 3 years for my mastersand doctorate. During my

second year, a Mexican kidIgnacioNarvaezwas in the ofce adjacent tomine. Ignacio was a wheat breeder forthe Mexican Ministry of Agricultureassociated with the [Nobel LaureateNorman] Borlaug group and hetalked about Mexico and his work.I said to myself, I want to work ininternational agriculture. I wasconsumed by this. But everything Itried to become afliated with theRockefeller Foundation was useless.Nothing happened. Rockefeller didntneed another plant pathologist.

So, I nished in 1957. Jobs werescarce. There was one job available

in Madison, Wisconsina foragepathologist for the U.S. Departmentof Agriculture, which I was aboutto accept. At Purdue, I lacked oneform for my doctoral thesis. I wentto the deans ofce in the School ofAgriculture to pick it up. While I wastalking to the secretary, Dean ErnestC. Youngalso a consultant to theRockefeller Foundation who knew mebecause of my frustrated attemptsto get into the Foundationwalked

Peter Jennings, the International Rice Research Institutes first rice breeder (1961-67), with a long career in

Latin America after his work in Asia, kicks off this historic series with a singular wit. He played a major role in

the development of IR8, the rice variety that would ultimately change the face of agriculture across Asia (see

Breeding Historyon pages 34-38 of Rice TodayVol. 5, No. 4). He reminisced on a warm, muggy day (20 July2007) at his home in Gainesville, Florida. Here are edited highlights of the interview.

by. He said, Peter, what are yougoing to do? I said, Well, Dean,Im going to go to Wisconsin. Heresponded, Didnt you want to workwith Rockefeller? I said, Yes. Hesaid, Wait a minute. The deanwalked into his ofce, picked up thephone, and called George Harrar[then RFs director for agricultureand later RF president, 1961-72].He left the door open so I couldhear. He said, George, Ive got akid here. He set some sort of anacademic record here at Purdueand he wants to work for you andwhat are you going to do about it?

So, I had two phone conversa-tions with George Harrar. Duringthose conversations, he saidsomething I never forgot, Wouldyou want to live in the Philippines?

I said, Of course! That night, I hadto look in my atlas to see exactlywhere in the Pacic the Philippineswere. He said, Well, were goingto do something there. Its going totake 3 or 4 years to get organized.Meanwhile, well have to ndsomething for you to do [ultimately,brief stints in Mexico and Colombia].

I have a profound belief inpredestination, fate, and luck. Had Ibeen 5 minutes earlier or later that

morning at Purdue in the deansofce, I would not have crossed pathswith Dean Young, there would havebeen no phone conversations withHarrar, and I would have had a careeras a forage pathologist in the U.S.

George Harrarhe

was magnificent!So, I got a job with the RockefellerFoundation in 1957. Terric! Whatsthe signicance of this? Bob [IRRIsrst director general, Robert F.]Chandlers book [An Adventurein Applied Science] cites the year1958about a year and a half after mytelephone calls with Harraras thetime when the Rockefeller and FordFoundations rst connected to thrashout the concept of IRRI. Harrar hadIRRI on his mind when he talked to

me much earlier on the phone aboutrice and the Philippines. You dont seethat in Chandlers book. The drivingforce behind IRRI was George Harrar.He was magnicent, a giant!

Getting germplasmin the early daysWhen I nally got to IRRI in October1961as a breeder, not a pathologistthe rst challenge was to assemblea comprehensive world collection of


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rice varieties. For germplasm, IRRIhad only some 300 odd varieties. Ispent a lot of time wandering backand forth in the mud trying to lookat these plants. I wrote a letter, co-signed by T.T. Chang [IRRI geneticist,1961-91], requesting any germplasmin small seed samples, and sent it to

rice workers or experiment stationsin some 60 countries. These werethe days when it was pretty easy tomove germplasm from one country toanother. The response was wonderful.Within months, boxes and boxesof seed packages were coming in.I guess within 2 or 3 years we hadseveral thousand accessions.

Increasing rice yieldsAnother challenge was more com-plicated. Chandler kept preaching:

increase yield! Okay, thats easy tosay, but how do you do it? I spent a lotof time talking with Akira Tanaka,head of IRRIs Plant PhysiologyDepartment [1962-66]. We tried todevelop a mental image in our mindsof what the leaves, stems, culms, andgeneral architecture would look likeon an ideal rice plant that would yieldmore. We determined that, if we weregoing to make any progress, we had todramatically change the plant type.

The rst seminar I gave at IRRIwas on what an ideal plant type hadto look like if we were going to gethigher yield. I wrote that up andsent it to Crop Science[Plant typeas a rice breeding objective, 4:13-15,1964]. There were no data, it wasjust philosophy. For some reason,Crop Sciencepublished it. Yearslater, I reread that paper, long afterIR8 came out [in late 1966]. And itjust seems to me that IR8 looks verymuch like what we were theorizing.

An epiphanyWell, the rest is history and just sheerluck. And it goes back to that rst setof 38 crosses [that ultimately led toIR8] we made in late 1962. About halfof them involved the three famousTaiwan short-statured varieties [Dee-geo-woo-gen, Taichung Native 1, andI-geo-tze]. They looked terrible underPhilippine conditions. They wereriddled with bacterial leaf blight.

They were shaded by tall things. Theywere sterile and miserable, but short!

We grew out the F1s [rstgeneration]38 combinations,which is ridiculous by todaysstandards. Thirty-eight crosses ina yearabsurd! But thats what wehad. So, we grew out the F1s; they

were terrible. They were worsethan the parents themselves. Theywere gigantic67 feet tall. Weharvested the seed from each of thesingle crosses38 populations. Andfor not having anything else, wehad a large F2[second generation]population4,0006,000plants from each single cross.

Maybe a month after trans-planting, one day we looked outthere. The plants from the rst crosswere tallterrible. It was a jungle.

It was bad. Then, we came onto theplants from one of the crosses thatinvolved one of the three Taiwanshort-statured varieties. We lookeddown the rows. Something hadhappened! It was an epiphany! I neverhad an experience like that in mylifebefore or since. There were tallplants and there were short plants,but there were no intermediateplants! The short ones were erect,darker green, and had sturdy stemsand a high number of tillers. Wecounted the tall plants and short

plants. Essentially, the ratio of tall toshort was 3 to 1obviously a singlegene recessive for shortness! It maysound something like arrogance,but I contend that I knew, at thatmoment, the signicance of this.

Mixing good science with luck

When I was a little boy, I was a fanof an American baseball team, theBrooklyn Dodgers. Their famousgeneral manager was Branch Rickey.This wizard said, Luck is the residueof design. I think he was right. Somepeople are lucky, some people are notlucky. Luck does appear on its ownvolition, I know, from time to time.But luck is a consequence of putting alot of mental observational evidenceall together and all of a sudden ithappens, it works. There is always

luck. But sometimes you earn yourluck. You inuence your luck for sure.

Go to ww w.irri.org/ricetoday to read the full

transcript of the Peter Jennings interview

in which he discusses more of his version

of the IR8 story, distributing IR8 in the

Philippines, his impressions of Bob Chandler

and other colleagues during the early days,

his rice work in Latin America including

genetic versus agronomic advances, and his

view on what are the challenges for IRRI

as it approaches its 50th anniversary.

IRRIS FIRST rice breeder, Peter Jennings, briefs visitors on IR8 in April 1966 just 7 months before itsofficial release.

URBITOO

NGLEO


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Rice TodayApril-June 2008


Reflections of a rice widow

JERBY

AGUIHON(

3)


Getting together at

Washington State

Jim was the grandson of avery famous pioneer in theeld of soil science, Dr. CurtisFletcher Marbut, who didquality international work in

South America, the Soviet Union, andAfrica, as well as in the United States.This was always on Jims mind andit honed his interest in doing similarresearch. Jim grew up on the BranchExperiment Station in Dickinson,North Dakota, where his father,Leroy Moomaw [also an agronomistand noted for his work with crestedwheat grass], was superintendentfor many years. Jim had a degree inbotany (ecology), with a particular

interest in applied agronomyinvolving soils, pastures, and grasses.

I met Jim at Washington StateUniversityWashington State Collegein those daysin a class on soilmicrobiology. We were both graduatestudents, but he had been thereseveral years before I met him duringthe 1954 fall [autumn] semester.He had come back from Alaska oncrutches because he had choppedthe wrong limb! He made an

Carolyn Moomaw Wilhelm and her late husband, James (Jim) Curtis Moomaw, arrived at International

Rice Research Institute (IRRI) headquarters in Los Baos, Philippines, in November 1961 with an infant son in

tow and ready for a grand adventure. After 8 years as IRRIs first agronomist (1961-69) and important posts

in Africa and Taiwan, he passed away prematurely at age 55 in 1983. During a recent visit to IRRIher first

in 26 yearsCarolyn spoke fondly about meeting and marrying Jim and their time at and beyond IRRI. Here

are edited highlights of the interview.

impression on me because he was oncrutchesand he was my lab partner.

A year passed and we didnt paymuch attention to each other. Thenhe visited me in the summer of 1955,when I was working at YellowstoneNational Park during a break frommy graduate studies. Suddenly, I

realized this older manhe was 5years older!who had impressedme was interested in me. We weremarried almost immediately (within6 months). He nished his verylong research project, a study ofgrazing and burning of pastures inthe Columbia Basin Region; I did a

MRS. MOOMAW WILHELM stands in front of IRRIs long-term continuous cropping experiment, which her latehusband started in 1963. Currently in its 132nd crop, it is the most intensively cultivated experimental sitein Asia, and has provided important data on the effects of such a cropping system.


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4 Rice TodayApril-June 2008

biochemical research project for anM.S. in the Bacteriology Department.Both of us completed our orals on19 September 1956, packed up, andleft that night en route to his rst jobas assistant professor of agronomyand soil science at the University ofHawaii. Hawaii in 1956 was not yet a

[U.S.] state, but still a territoryandthat in itself was new territory for us.

IRRI-bound on the USS Hoover

Jim was being courted by theRockefeller Foundation, which bythen [along with the Ford Foundation]had decided to establish IRRI.Originally, they were thinking Jimmight go to Japan to do research inSendai on Hokkaido. Then, SterlingWortman [IRRI associate director,1961-64], who had known and worked

with Jim occasionally, suggested thatJim be considered for IRRIs rstagronomist position. So, Jim wasinvited to see IRRI as it was beingbuilt [July 1961] and to meet [DirectorGeneral Robert F.] Chandler andthe rest is history. We were excited,very excited. We packed up andtraveled by ship on the USS Hooverfrom Honolulu to Yokohama [Japan]and Hong Kong prior to docking inManila. We spent several weeks inthe Manila Hotel while waiting forour house to be nished and ourhousehold effects to be cleared.

That was the beginning of somevery exciting times for us. Since Ihad already circumnavigated theglobe with Jim (East Africa, Delhi,Calcutta, Bangkok, Hong Kong,and Tokyo during a Fulbright yearto and from Kenya), I was not soshocked by the poverty we saw in thePhilippines when we rst arrived.

As a child, rice certainly was

not something that I ever thoughtof. My mother would serve it to mewith cinnamon and sugarricepudding. Now, thanks to IRRI, wethink of it in an entirely differentway. Im very snooty about rice,even today you see. I dont wantto buy that old stock thats in themarket. I know some good Asian ricestores in Dallas and New York andwhere I live now [in Oklahoma].

There were very few Americansat IRRI in the beginning, but therewere many other nationalities andthey were also excited to be a part

of this new venture. However, insome respects, the women [spouses]with whom I interacted were oftenquite lost and lonesome withoutthe extended families they wereaccustomed to. The Chinese, theCeylonese [Sri Lankan], the Indianscame from cultures in which theyhad strong support systems. Coming[to IRRI] was a much greatersacrice for them than it was for

me or for any of the Americanwomen [who came to IRRI withtheir husbands in those days].

Going to Ceylon[In 1967] IRRI received a grantfrom the Ford Foundation for riceresearch in Ceylon (todays Sri Lanka)and Bob Chandler offered Jim theopportunity to lead the project. [Atrst] I didnt want to go. We had fourlittle boys (ages 7, 5, 2 and a half, and1+) and I couldnt see myself copingand I was worried about obtainingpotable water, milk, good food, and

The current c l imate of rapidlyclimbing grain prices, along withincreasing reports of civil unrest dueto unaffordable or unavailable food,makes the 32-year-old comments ofDr. Moomawthen director generalof the Asian Vegetable Research and

Development Center in Taiwaneerilyprescient.

The food crisis is the result ofspecific failures in specificlocations, for specific causes

usually weather or technology. Itis not the trend, but the deviationfrom the trend, that causes disaster.Conceptually, the idea of a suddenfood crisis is misleading. Historyhas always known hunger, and, in fact,hunger was much more severe in thepast, when populations were muchlower. One hundred years ago, China

had a drought that killed more thanthree million people. India has had food failures for the duration of its recorded history.Compared with past faminesthe one in the 1880s claimed almost a fifth of their totalpopulationhunger has been a negligible problem for India in the 20th century.

Nevertheless, there is no question that population growth exacerbates the problemof hunger, and, of course, many other social problems. It narrows the margin between thetrend of production and the trend of human needs, making otherwise trivial deviations inproduction trends disastrous in their human consequences.

Agricultural technology will continue to solve problems. But can it keep up? Thatis what Robert Chandler, first director of both IRRI and the Asian Vegetable Researchand Development Center (AVRDC), and George Harrar, former president of the RockefellerFoundation), have been asking for 25 years. People cannot average their appetitesif yourtechnology fails for whatever reason at just one time, you have disaster on your hands.

The areas of the world where the threat of future hunger runs highest, I believe, arethe high-density, low-income nations, with relatively limited resources on a per capita

basis. India, Indonesia, and mainland China all face difficulties. Although there has beenless starvation, proportionately and in absolute terms, in this century than the last, itis possible that, with enough bad luck and bad planning, there could be as much by theend of the century, or more.

Go to www.irri.org/publications/today/Pioneer_Interviews.asp for more observations on a variety of

topics by Dr. Moomaw, then AVRDC director general, excerpted from a 1976 interview conducted by

journalist Nick Eberstadt.

James Moomaw on the world food crisis, summer 1976

MOOMAWF

AMILYCOLLECTION


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other basic necessities. In the end,

I agreed to go and we were quite aunit going into the IRRI programat Kandy [south-central Ceylon].

Most of the time, Jim wasin the eld. He was all over thatisland. He was so motivated to seeeverything and to get as many riceplots established as possible. Heworked all the time and so I had myown responsibilities taking care offour sons. All of a sudden, we werethe only ones [IRRI people in Ceylonand almost the only Americans!]and so everybody who was comingthrough, of course, either stayedwith us or we entertained them.That was reallyfun for me. It was avery, very nice 2 years that we spentthere. It wasnt easy, but it was nice.

Into Africa

After Ceylon, I was disappointed thatwe didnt come back to IRRI. I wantedto come back. I wasnt all that keen ongoing to Africa. We had arm-twisting

sessions in New York with [Richard]Bradeld [IRRI agronomist, 1963-71]and the Rockefeller people who talkedus into the job. We knew that it wasimportant. We knew that this newinstitution [the International Instituteof Tropical Agriculture (IITA)]needed what Jim could offer, and inthe end we decided that we would doit and we went to Nigeria [in 1970].

Jim enjoyed IITA. He rstwent there as the rice specialist.

Together with the resident Nigerian

rice breeder, he developed therice program and then becamethe farming systems leader. Thisbroadened his scope a lot to includeeconomics and soil and watermanagement. Some of the peoplewhom he hired in the departmentwere just very, very good and verymotivatedincluding EugeneTerry [a future director general ofWARDA, the Africa Rice Center,1987-96]. It was a big departmentwith respected Nigerian staff too.

Then, Jim was offered theoutreach director position. Heaccepted and traveled all overAfrica putting in programs. I dontthink he ever got to South Africa;he traveled mostly in the middlepart of Africa. It was dangerous inmany respects, mostly traveling ina small plane. It was very nerve-racking for me. Internal travel whilewe were in Nigeria was really verydifcult because the roads were

so bad. So, I didnt get to do verymuch traveling in Africa myself.

Still aliveWithout Frank Byrnes [IRRIs rstcommunications specialist, 1963-67],I would have lost contact with theinternational life after Jim died [of abrain tumor at the age of 55 in NewYork] in 1983. Hes the one that madea real effort to keep me informedof what was going on at IRRI. His

friendship continued after I moved toDallas about 3 years after Jim died.I really didnt emerge for severalmore years until Frank invited me toWinrock [International; a nonprotorganization associated with theRockefeller Foundation, whereseveral former IRRI staff worked]

in February 1989. This sort of joltedme out of my grief. It took me sucha long time to recover because theboys were my major concern, andmy edging career and our move toDallas were also major distractions.So, I really hadnt come out of it untilI met Frank at Winrock. Finally, Icould say Im still alive; Im still here.

Dirty boots and rice widows

Bob and Sunny Chandler wereincredible peopleinspiring,

energetic, devoted, and generous.Bob had very little patience for trivia,however. He wanted everybodyallthe scientiststo get their bootsdirty right away, be out in the eld.In fact, the story was he would goaround and look at the boots. If astaff member hadnt been in the eldthat day, there were questions. Ofcourse, Jim had no problem with that.Agronomy is the eld. We admiredboth of them greatly and I learnedso much from Sunny. Apart frommy mother, she had more inuenceon me as a developing, maturingyoung woman than anyone else inmy life and that holds true today.

Yes, we [the spouses of theearly IRRI international staff] wererice widows. I think Bob Chandleractually coined that phrase. Andthats what we called ourselves.He was an empathetic man andrecognized our plight, but IRRIscientists, often away from home for

long periods, had a job to do and weappreciated and supported that.

Go to www.irri.org/publications/today/

Pioneer_Interviews.asp to read the full

transcript of the Carolyn Moomaw interview

in which she discusses more of her familys

life at IRRI headquarters and in Ceylon,

gives her no-nonsense impressions of

other pioneer IRRI staff and their families,

and describes how attitudes in Asia

and Africa are completely different.

CAROLYN WITH HER brood (from left, Bill, Charlie, Martin, and John) in front of their house at IRRI on22 January 1967. Later that year, they joined Jim in Ceylon as IRRIs first outposted family.

ALVINW.

REGIER


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The problem solver

GENE

HETTEL

(3)


Coming to IRRI

Having worked at thenearby University of thePhilippines at Los Baosas a visiting Cornell

professor, I knew of the area andthe plans of Bob Chandler [IRRIsrst director general] and hisgroup to set up the Institute inthe early 1960s. In 1972, Frosty[Forrest F., Ford Foundation vicepresident of overseas development]Hill,chairman of IRRIs Board ofTrustees, asked me if I wanted thejob of director general [DG]. I hadbeen working at Cornell Universityas director of research in the Collegeof Agriculture. I asked a few friends

what they thought and they saidthat it would be a good thing. So, Idecided to try it. Of course, I alsohad to get permission from my wife[Martha] and she was delighted togo back to the Philippines with me.

Challenges and achievements

In those days, I thought the greatestchallenge for IRRI was to inuence,to the degree it could, qualityresearch for our collaborators in

After 26 years at Cornell University in the United States, Nyle C. Brady became the International Rice Research Institutes

(IRRIs) third director general in 1973. During 8 years at the helm, he pioneered new cooperative relationships between the

Institute and the national agricultural research systems in Asia. After IRRI, he served as senior assistant administrator for

science and technology at the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1981 to 1989 and was also a senior

international development consultant for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank in

Washington, D.C. Born in Colorado in the U.S., he earned his BS in chemistry from Brigham Young University in 1941 and his

PhD in soil science from North Carolina State University in 1947. Now an emeritus professor at Cornell, he is the co-author

(with Ray R. Weil) of the classic textbook, The nature and properties of soils, now in its 14th edition. He and his wife Martha

are retired and live near Albuquerque, New Mexico.

developing countries. IRRI had madegreat progress, but it did not alwayscommunicate well. [We needed tofoster] international cooperationbetween IRRI scientists and those inthe developing worlds rice countries.

This also involved inter-disciplinary collaboration to increaserice production around the world.When I arrived [at IRRI], there werefour separate rice improvementresearch programsi.e., in plantbreeding, entomology, plantpathology, and agronomy. This wasgood because it was competitive,but I said, Lets see what we can doif we can get together to develop atruly interdisciplinary collaborative

research program. And we did,making full use of the thousands ofgenetic accessions [seed samples]in IRRIs germplasm bank.

Back then, the germplasm bankholdings were in paper bags! A recould have destroyed everything.So, the rst thing we had to dowas to build [in 197677] a trulymodern facility to store the seeds[see photo]. Second, we beganevaluating those cultivars [housed

in the new Rice Genetic ResourcesLaboratory, which on 24 October1981 would be named the N.C. BradyLaboratory] for their resistance todifferent insects and diseases andfor their tolerance of acidic, saline,and toxic soils and drought. Everydepartment was involved. The plantbreeders products were evaluatedby the entomologists, the plantpathologists, the agronomists, andthe social scientists in terms of whatwas useful to them and to the farmerswhom they were representing. Thisis how the Genetic Evaluation andUtilization Program(GEU as it wasknown) came into existence. I thinkit really revolutionized, internally,

our ability to provide the worldwith products that could be usedin breeding programs elsewhere.

TheGEU was basically a plantbreeding and genetic improvementprogram that the whole Institute wasconcerned with. And as far as I wasconcerned, it was fantastic! When werst started working on [this concept],there were some in the group whowere not exactly enthusiastic, atleast in dealing with me on this. But

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very soon, I began to listen to themas they gave speeches talking aboutthis Institute-wide genetic evaluationand utilization program, whichbasically involved evaluation of ricelines the breeders had developed.

Not the most popular DG

I wasnt always the most popularDG. You could ask anyone whostayed there for a while. Somethought maybe I was too demandingwhen I called them late at night forsomething. As a manager, I couldhave probably used more kid gloves.Sometimes, I was rather adamanton what I wanted done and, I guess,if I could do it again Id be a littlemore gentle in my interactions withpeople and in working with them.

But what is of interest to me is

that when I called upon scientists togo out of their way to do extra workor to take on an assignment over theweekend, I was never turned down.This was not because they were afraidof me, but because they loved theirwork and they loved IRRI. They werededicated to the Institution and it wasa great joy for me to see that happen.

Challenges for IRRI today

I think IRRI needs to make effectiveuse of biotechnology and othermodern research tools to help theplant breeders develop rice lines thatefciently utilize plant nutrients,that tolerate adverse conditions suchas drought, and that are resistantto insects and diseases, therebyreducing the need for pesticides.

To do this, IRRI must havelinkages with scientists in boththe developing and the moredeveloped countries. This is advicethe whole CGIAR [Consultative

Group on International AgriculturalResearch] system [which includesIRRI] could accept. I recognizethe political reasons why this isdifcult because some countriesdont want to use biotechnology. Butthe developing countries need theimproved crops much more than wedo in the U.S. So, I think this is thedirection in which IRRI and othersuch centers should and could go.

IRRI must also continue to push

what it has been doing latelymoreafter I left than when I was theretorecognize the consequences of whatwe do to the environment in termsof pesticide use and fertilizer use,i.e., nitrogen getting into the watercausing troubles later on. I thinkthis is an opportunity for IRRI to

develop high-yielding, quality rice insuch a way that the soil, water, andatmosphere will not be adverselyaffected. Its a real challenge to knowexactly how to do this, but I think itcan be done. Im not suggesting thatthe Institute is not doing it; it hasalready made remarkable progress.

We were there to solve problems

My IRRI experience ranks very high.I had three careers: one at Cornell asa professor and a teacher, one at IRRI,

and then one in Washington, D.C.with the U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment, UNDP, and TheWorld Bank. I wont say which onewas the more critical. I will say thatmy experience at IRRI, not onlyfor me but for my wife and family,was a highlight because we wereinvolved in something that wouldhelp humanity. I felt I was workingwith a group of individuals, men andwomen, who wanted to improve thelot of people. They were not therejust to do research and write papers;they were there to solve problems.

I remember one time, I think,grassy stunt virus suddenly invaded

ON 9 NOVEMBER 1976, IRRI Director General Nyle Brady ceremoniously sinks the first pile for the RiceGenetic Resources Laboratory, a structure that would officially (unbeknownst to him at the time) bear hisname only a few years later.

the Philippines. What did we do?Within a month, we had alreadyevaluated and found certain linesthat were resistant to the grassy stuntvirus and our plant breeders werealready crossing them to developacceptable rice varieties. That kindof effort really is heartwarming.

Its IRRI class

Ill tell one story that relates to notthe scientists but to a member of the[non-research] staff at the Institute,a Filipino. The CGIAR was holdingone of its annual meetings in Manilaand the participants decided to visitIRRI on a Sunday. When checkingto see that everything was preparedfor the luncheon to be served to thisgroup, I approached one young ladywho was helping with the service.

Well, do you think itis rst class? I asked.

No sir, she said, its betterthan that. Its IRRI class.

This exchange told me thatshe had pride in IRRI and in beingassociated with the Institute,which I thought was just great.

Go towww.irri.org/publications/

today/Pioneer_Interviews.aspto read

the full transcript of the Nyle Brady

interview in which he discusses more

about his IRRI experience including

the establishment of the International

Network for the Genetic Evaluation

of Rice (INGER) and IRRI in Africa.

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Figures, fake guns, and fund-raising

JERBY

AGUIHON(

3)


A new bride with astatistics degree

How did I get to IRRI? Bymarrying, in April 1967, aFilipino, Arturo A. Gomez[who was professor of

agronomy at the University of thePhilippines at Los Baos]. I hadearned a PhD in statistics from NorthCarolina State University, the placewhere I met my future husband. Afterour wedding in Bangkok, I decidedto resign from my teaching job atChulalongkorn University and moveto Los Baos to be with my husband.I hoped to nd a job there instead ofin Manila because going to Manilaevery day back then would havebeen horrible because of the terribleroads. Luckily, BurtonOate, who was then chief

statistician and head ofthe Statistics Departmentat IRRI, was going to takesabbatical leave at theAsian Development Bankin Manila for 1 year.

So, he heard aboutthis new bride with adegree in statistics whowas nearby. He contactedme and suggested I applyto be his temporary

For 25 years from July 1967, Thailands Kwanchai Gomez was the International Rice Research Institutes chief statistician.

She was also IRRIs first female international scientist in what was then a very male-dominated field. In 1993, Dr. Gomez

moved out of statistics to work on donor relations as the head of the new Liaison, Coordination, and Planning Unit, which

focused on an innovative experiment at the time: fund-raising. She returned to Thailand in December 1996 to spend 2

years at IRRIs Bangkok office and round off more than 3 decades with the Institute. Dr. Gomez, who remains in Bangkok,is currently executive director of the Asia Rice Foundation, which is based in IRRIs Philippine hometown of Los Baos

replacement. Bob Chandler [IRRIDirector General, 1960-72] andColin McClung [IRRI assistantdirector (1964-66) and associatedirector (1967-71)] interviewed andhired me and the rest is history.

As a statistician at a researchinstitute like IRRI, my goal was tosee that all rice researchers, be theyin the eld or laboratory, used theproper statistical techniques andprocedures. To my surprise when Icame, statisticsbe it experimentaldesigns or statistical analyseswerenot appreciated, understood, orused very much in any of IRRIsexperiments. That was a challengefor a very young person like me, awomanthe only lady scientist for

a long, long time atIRRI, not to mention

being an Asian fromThailand. It wasdifcult working withthese very renowned,relatively older,scientists and tellingthem that they oughtto be using statisticsin their experiments.

Things changed forthe better when I talkedto Hank Beachell, then

the chief plant breeder [and eventualWorld Food Prize winner in 1996].I thought, if I could convince him,maybe I could convince the othersas well. So, I asked him why he wasnot using statistics in his yield trials.He looked at me and said, What doyou statisticians know about eldexperiments and the problems webreeders face every day? You guyssit in your air-conditioned roomand expect to tell us what to do inthe eld. I was taken aback, but notangry. I thought about this overnight.

A good perspectiveThe next day, I went to Beachell andthanked him profusely for havinggiven me a very good perspective.Maybe I could win him and theothers over about using statistics if I

conducted my own eld experiments.Now, I didnt know anything

about eld experiments. I didntknow much about rice researchto start with. When Chandler andMcClung interviewed me, theyasked me two questions: Whatexperience do you have with riceresearch and what knowledge do youhave about rice? I said the closestI ever got to a rice plant was whenI was traveling from Bangkok toDR. GOMEZ at IRRI in the 1960s

Rice TodayOctober-December 2008

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Ayutthaya, in the Central Plain ofThailand, and I saw the rice plantsalong the road as the car passed by,and that I also knew nothing aboutrice research. I thought that wouldbe the end of the interview, but itcontinued and they hired me anyway!

I went to Bob Chandler and asked

him for some resources to conducteld experiments because until thenthe Statistics Department had neverdone any eld experiments and thusno resources were available. Chandlersaid: Take whatever you need; Iam pleased that youre going out tothe eld. He said this because, atthe time, our chief world-renownedsoil scientist, Felix Ponnamperuma

[IRRIs rst soil chemist, 1961-85],only worked in the lab. Chandlerhad tried to push him out to the eldbut he never succeeded. So, after Istarted conducting experiments, hewent to Ponnamperuma and said,If Kwanchai can go to the eld, socan you. It worked. Ponnamperuma

did go out and conducted eldexperiments after that.

I learned a lot by conducting eldexperiments. S.K. De Datta [IRRIagronomist, 1964-91], my mentorand teacher, taught me everythingI needed to know about conductingrice eld experiments. I have alwaysbeen grateful to him for that.After that, I was able to talk to the

researchers much more easily andwas able to convince them of the needto use proper statistical proceduresin their experiments. I probablywas the rst statistician anywherewho conducted eld experimentsto get closer to the scientists.

Helping behind the scenesThere are certain professions thatmay be doomed to be behind thescenes. Statistics is one of those.We were used to it and we did notmind it very much. We took pridein seeing researchers using properstatistical procedures in theirresearch. I appreciate the commentsof Ronnie Coffman [IRRI plantbreeder, 1971-81], which afrmthat the use of statistics at IRRIhas really helped the scientists.

Regarding Coffmans commentabout the statistics situation before1971, that the yield trials were notreplicated [see box, below left], Imust defend Beachell. Actually, hewas right. In those days, he reallydid not need statistics for his yieldtrials. In the late 1960s, some ofthe new varieties were yielding89 tons [per hectare] while thetraditional ones were yielding 12tons. For that kind of difference, youcan see it with your eyes! You didnot need statistics to prove it.

Of course, those were the goodold days of Hank Beachell. Such largeyield differences did not last long. So,as time passed, researchers had tostart looking for smaller differences3, 2, and even 1 ton per hectare. Forthat, statistics were needed to detectdifferences that were becomingsmaller and smaller. Researchersrequired more precision in makingmeasurements, and in controlling

experimental errors so that smalldifferences could be detected.

IRRI researchers beganrecognizing the importance ofstatistics not only because I wentto the eld to conduct experimentsbut also because the situationhad changed. Statistics becamea hit because the researchersknew they could not detect thosesmaller differences scienticallyby themselves. So, they came

On Kwanchai Gomez and the importance of statistical analysisNyle Brady, IRRI director general (1973-81), in

his pioneer interview: Kwanchai Gomez was

a great organizer. For the Genetic Evaluation

and Utilization (GEU) Program, she was the one

who kept the records of what was going on.

I remember going to meetings during which

she said: Now you guys I know have been

doing some studies to determine resistance

to various insects and diseases, but I dont

have any records of what youve done. I cant write it up if you dont tell me

about it. So she got on their backs and she was remarkable in that way.

Ronnie Coffman, plant breeder (1971-81), said: If I had to identify the person

most responsible for the development of

IR36 [at one time the most widely planted

rice variety in the world], it would probably

be Kwanchai Gomez. She designed the

sensitive, quadruple-lattice yield trials that

caused us to notice it. IR36 was an open plant

type, not very attractive to the eye. Prior to

the establishment of those yield trials, we

would have almost certainly thrown it away. Prior to 1971, the IRRI breeding

program did not replicate its yield trials, much to the chagrin of Kwanchai.

Graham McLaren, Dr. Gomezs successor as chief statistician and head

of the IRRI Biometrics Unit and its various incarnations (1993-2008), said, Itwas the GEU that allowed the introduction of new methodologies. Today, its

difficult to find opportunities to introduce

new methodologies and thats a frustration.

Teaching statistics and bioinformatics is a

challenge as well. There is huge demand

for training in this area, but it is also a very

difficult topic to teach and to keep peoples

attention so they grasp the principles without

getting bogged down in the detail.


GENE

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knocking at my door. We becamequite popular because the scientistsneeded us. When they rst arrivedin my ofce, they would sayapologetically, Oh, by the way, wedont know anything about statistics.And I would say, Oh, but I dontknow anything about your eld of

discipline either, so lets talk.I want to reiterate that the

negligible application of statisticsin the early years of IRRI was notanybodys fault. But I appreciatethe remarks of Coffman and Brady[see box]. Of course, the GeneticEvaluation and Utilization (GEU)Program was Bradys baby. He createdit and I only helped him organize it.The GEU was truly multidisciplinary.The scientists of different disciplineswere not used to working together.

They argued a lot, but that wasokay. It was never a personal thing.I enjoyed those years. It was noteasy, but it was fun. We made theGEU a success and a lot of good ricevarietieslike IR36came out of it.

Applying statistics worldwideMy goal as a statistician wasto get statistics applied in riceexperimentsnot only at IRRI butthroughout Asia and the rest of theworld. I think that, in my small way,I achieved that. IRRI became a userof statistics. During those years, itbecame the model. National programresearchers came and saw what IRRIwas doing in the area. Of course,they followed and put statistics to usein their rice experiments as well.

We had many nondegreetraining programs in those years.Statistics became a key course inthose programs, accounting for24 hours to 2030 hours per

course. I think that helped our causegreatlyfor many years, everybodywho passed through IRRI for traininglearned something about statisticalapplications in rice research. So,when they went back home, theywere able to apply the concepts.

I must thank IRRI for enablingme to do two things that I believehelped greatly in my efforts. Oneis that, while on sabbatical leaveat Stanford University, I wrote a

book with my husband [StatisticalProcedures for AgriculturalResearch]. That book has beenread and used not only in Asia,but all over the world. [Indeed, itis the most popular book IRRIhas ever produced.] This hasbeen one of my greatest joysto

produce an effective tool thatcan help achieve my goal ofteaching people about statisticswhether they are studentsor working scientists.

The book was written32 years ago, updated a bitin a 1984 second editionpublished by Wiley, andis still available. In thosedays, desktop computerswere not accessible toeverybody, so I put in

the book all the statisticalcalculations in detail. Many people,especially statisticians, asked mewhy I had to detail each and everystatistical analysis, step by step.My reply: if you use a computer,suddenly the answer comes out. Youdont know what went on because theprogram did it for you automatically.My detailed explanation in the bookhelps researchers to understandwhy and how a certain statisticalanalysis was computed. This wouldhelp them to understand how tointerpret the results better as well.

The second thing that IRRIenabled me to do was to developa statistical computer packagecalled IRRISTAT and make itfree to everyone who needed it.IRRISTAT became one of the mostwidely used statistical packagesavailable in Asia since, at thattime, most Asian rice researchersdid not have ready access to other

existing but Western-designedstatistical packages due to theirhigh costs. In recent years, a slightlydifferent Windows-compatibleversion, called CropStat, has beendeveloped by Graham McLarensgroup and is now available onlinevia the IRRI Web site (www.irri.org/science/software/cropstat.asp).

[Local politics and advances inthe discipline led to gradual changes.The Statistics Unit became Project

Management Services and Biometricsin 1990, simply Biometrics by1992, then expanded to Biometricsand Bioinformatics in 2001, andnally became the Crop ResearchInformatics Laboratory in 2006.From 1993, Dr. McLaren headed theunit until September 2008, when heleft IRRI to work in Mexico for theGeneration Challenge Program.]

From statistics to fund-raisingStatistical knowhow was notrequired to head IRRIs new Liaison,Coordination, and Planning Unit[created by Klaus Lampe, the IRRIdirector general at the time, in1993 to focus on establishing closerelationships with IRRI donors],and I was thus reluctant to take onthe job. I nally agreed to take thejobfor two reasons. First, IRRI

was having nancial difculties andsomeone needed to go out and lookfor funds to sustain its operations.I believed that I owed IRRI a lot. Ihad gained a good reputation in thestatistics discipline because of IRRI.So, I wanted to repay. A special unitfor donor relations was never triedbefore. Somebody had to set up thesystem and I was pleased to help.

Second, even though I wasntsure if I had the right qualications

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to do the job well, I knew that Lampe

trusted me and I trusted him, whichwas an important ingredient forthe success of such a unit. Besides,Lampe was a good fund-raiser andhad in fact taught me a lot. I knewthat I could always count on himto help me out when I needed it.

A call to arms

When Lampe arrived as directorgeneral in 1988, I was just a workingscientist and never had much ofa chance to see him. However,

one day, he called me to his ofcesaying there was a problem: Yourson Victor [who was 10 years oldat that time] brought a fake gun tothe international school today, hefrowned, and he had a real bulletas well. The school principal wasntvery happy about that. I thoughtto myself, Oh, my god, how couldVictor bring a real bullet to schooland where did he get it from? Then,Lampe immediately said, You

know any boy at his age might do

something like that. Dont worrytoo much about it. With a greatsigh of relief, I said, Oh, ok, thankyou, and left his ofce in a hurry.

Now, I didnt know Lampe wellbefore this and it was the rst timewe had really ever talked. But, twodays later, he called me again tohis ofce. I thought to myself, Oh,what did Victor do this time? ButI was wrong; it had nothing to dowith Victor. Lampe told me IRRIwas being asked to do strategic

planning. It would be the rst timefor such an exercise at IRRI and heneeded somebody to organize thegroup that would prepare the planand he would like me to handle it.

He added that this task wouldreally take a lot of my time and Imay not have time to do statistics.At the time, I thought he just wantedme out of statistics, but then maybehe saw something in me earlier inthe week when we discussed guns

Go to www.irri.org/publications/today/Pioneer_Interviews.asp to read thefull transcript of the Kwanchai Gomezinterview in which she discusses moreabout her IRRI experiences, including

her recollections of six directors generaland other colleagues and her worktoday with the Asia Rice Foundation.

KWANCHAI GOMEZ and her statistical successor Graham McLaren inspect a plot of IR36 at IRRI. Some attribute the selection of this famous rice varietyonce

one of the worlds most widely plantedto the use of proper experimental design and statistical analysis.

and bullets. I thought long and hard

about his request and nally said:Ok, I will agree as long as I stillcan be in the Statistics Department.Strategic planning shouldnt take thewhole day, so he said, Sure, sure,sure. Of course, not many yearslater, he changed his mind about mestaying in statistics. But, anyway,we became close coworkers, more sofor me than with any other directorsgeneral during my 32 years at IRRI.So maybe Victor was responsiblefor bringing us together. Otherwise,

he may have never noticed me.

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Dedicated scientistsa childs inspiration

JERBYAGUIHON(3)


Growing up

During my stay at IRRI, Ireally grew up. Comingfrom India [Tamil NaduAgricultural University

where my father was based], Ihad the opportunity to interactwith new cultures that I found tobe fr iendly and warm. We weregreeted with great smiles and weremost fortunate to make some verygood friends during our stay.

Although I was only 10 yearsold, I had the opportunity toobserve many dedicated scientistsat work. I was impressed withthat dedication, exemplified bymy own dad who was out of the

house all day working very hard.In one way or another, all thescientists focused on one plantasingle crop, rice, which is the mostimportant one in the whole world.I thought a lot about plants then.Plants play such important rolesin our lives in many different waysbesides just giving us food. It wasfor these reasons, the dedicationof the IRRI scientists and theimportance of plants, that I decided

During the summer of 2006, Usha Rani Palaniswamy returned with her father, K.M. Palaniswamy, to the International

Rice Research Institute (IRRI) for the first time in 35 years. In 1968, as a young child, Dr. Palaniswamy moved from India

to Institute headquarters in Los Baos, Philippines, when her father was assigned to IRRIs Statistics Department. Fondly

recalling those days through the mind and eyes of a child, she relates how the experience influenced her future career in

science. When interviewed, she was an assistant professor of plant physiology at the University of Connecticut. Today, she

is chair of the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Excelsior College in Albany, New York. She also pays loving

tribute to her father, who at age 78 died tragically in a road accident in India on 5 December 2007, a little over a year after

his own Pioneer Interview (see box) during the same 2006 IRRI visit. She is the co-author (with her father) of A handbook of

statistics for teaching and research in plant and crop scienceand more recently of Asian crops and human dietetics.

to become a scientist myselfspecifically, a horticulturist.

IRRI provided our entirefamily with a unique opportunityto interrelate with new cultures andto learn about the world and thepeople in it. I look back at my time atIRRI and see it as one of the greatestperiods of my life. I really maturedas I had interactions with not onlythe great cultureof the Philippinesbut also othercultures thatwere partof IRRIsinternationalcommunity,

includingKoreans, Thais,and even Indiansfrom differentstates in myhome countrywhom I wouldnot have hadthe opportunityto meet if mydad had left usin Tamil Nadu.

Warm local cultureI fondly remember the largetrees with white fowers at IRRI

headquarters and the green grasson which we would have picnicsand share our snacks in the eveningwith my dad and his colleagues[see photo, below]. We would cometo IRRI on the bus and enjoy thefountain, the lights, and the cool

1Rice TodayJanuary-March 2009

HAPPY DAYS at IRRI circa 1970: Usha Palaniswamy (with white headband andglasses) enjoys snacks with her father Kodiveri (to her left), mother Indrani (infront of her), her three siblings (from center to right in back row) Meera Devi,Vijayaraghavan, and Rajeswari, Statistics Department research assistant Rosa-linda Alicbusan Graham (second from left in back row), husband Bill, and familyfriend Verna Estaphia (left foreground).


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air-conditioned lounge. We came forthe movies screened in the ChandlerHall Auditorium and were greatlyappreciative of the gifts that we littlekids would get at Christmas time.

The local people with whomwe interacted were so kind. AsHindus, we never really appreciated

Christianity or celebrated Christmasbefore coming to the Philippines. Westayed at the Gonzales Compoundoutside of IRRI and the landladywould knock on our door and offerus rice and different desserts. Sincemy mom is a vegetarian, our hostsmade a point of offering us manyvegetables and fruits that weregrowing in their gardens. We hadgreat appreciation for the localculture, which is so very warm andfriendly. I look back on this all with

fond memories, enjoying it all.

A model for research

I returned to IRRI [in 2006] tolook into including the Institute asa model of successful agriculturalresearch outside the United Statesin a curricular development andinnovation project Im working on[funded by the U.S. Departmentof Agriculture/Cooperative StateResearch, Education, and ExtensionService International Scienceand Education Competitive GrantsProgram]. I hope to inspire youngstudents to become agriculturalscientists just as I once was yearsago by my IRRI experience.IRRI can truly be an educationalmodel to show that real-worldissues and problems can be solvedthrough science and research.

Agriculture is the most basic ofprofessions that has touched the livesof people since time immemorial,

since antiquity. That will continueand it is very important that wekeep the younger generation excitedabout agriculture and that theyconsider agriculture as a desirablecareer option. My effort here is toincorporate IRRIs techniques in mycurriculum design and universityteaching. Many universities in theUnited States should be very excitedabout research thats happeningoverseas and making students

aware of it, as well as thinking aboutplaying an important collaborativerole in alleviating poverty throughscientic efforts in agriculture.

A tribute to dad

My dadmy inspiration and rolemodel in my lifewas very passionateabout rice. We both shared fervorfor the plant sciences. He enjoyedwatching farmers working in theirelds in the early morning. As Ihave been living outside of Indiafor a long time (in the United ArabEmirates since 1982 and the U.S.since 1994), I had not had much timewith him. So, I took advantage of oursummer 2006 excursion to IRRI.

We went out for morning walksand watched the workers in theIRRI rice plots. His face wouldlight up immediately as he wouldsmell the air and start talking about

the importance of agriculture inthe human experience. During hisscholar days at IRRI and the nearbyUniversity of the Philippines at LosBaos, he studied under Dr. KwanchaiGomez, IRRIs chief statistician [seeFigures, fake guns, and fund-raising,on pages 16-19 of Rice Today Vol. 7,No. 4]. So, it was no surprise that,even 35 years later, he was quick topoint out the importance of statisticalmethods in eld experiments. He

Excerpt from K.M. Palaniswamys Pioneer Interview:On IRRIs fastidious but accommodating director

During my stay at IRRI, I had several occasions

to accompany Dr. Robert Chandler [IRRI director

general, 1960-72] in and around the Institute. I

observed that he had a keen interest in keeping

the IRRI grounds very clean and neat. Once, when

I was walking with him in the cafeteria, he saw a

cigarette butt on the floor. He bent down, picked it

up, and carried it all the way to a waste bin. It was

very surprising to see a person of his stature cleaning up the area. But it was a

memorable lesson [teaching by example] for all of us watching.

One very important event I remember was the moon landing by the

American astronauts on 20 July 1969. At that time, Dr. Chandler opened the

lounge so all the staff from IRRI and the University of the Philippines at Los

Baos could watch the landing on the TV. Everyone was silent and watched very

keenly. When the landing was over, we expressed our joy and happiness with

smiles all around. It was a great event in history that, thanks to Dr. Chandlers

accommodating forethought, we all had a chance to witness.

Rice TodayJanuary-March 200914

could immediately pick out an off-type in a plot and say how importantit is to rogue a plot [remove infectedor undesirable individuals froma pure population] that is beingused for producing good seed orobtaining good experimental results.

Dad was a self-made manwho raised all his children to bescholars. He continued to learnand obtained his PhD. He heldseveral key positions as departmenthead of physical sciences at TamilNadu Agricultural University;professor of statistics at KhartoumUniversity, Sudan; and an expertwith the United Nations EconomicCommission for Western Asia in Iraq.

Since retirement, he wasworking on a book, Guidelines forrice researchers in the estimation ofsome plant parameters. I contributedsome of the chapters and hope to

complete it soon in his memory.He was in excellent health so his

passing, due to the road accident inCoimbatore, was all too sudden forany of us to grasp as being real.

Go to www.irri.org/publications/today/Pioneer_Interviews.asp forthis and other Pioneer Interviewsas IRRI approaches its 50thanniversary in 2010.

JERBY

AGUIHON


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In the Punjaban outstanding farmer revisited

GENEHETTEL(3)


Something I had never dreamed of

My father, S. Ram Singh,was a progressive farmerand I would say that Iinherited from him the

gene that bestowed upon me mylove for agriculture. After earningmy masters degree in economicsin 1960, I worked full time onthis farm to produce seeds, as myfather had. I also continued to growvarious crops [wheat, potato, corn,ground nut]. In 1966, when the ricerevolution came, I started to growrice, not only as a commercial cropbut also for seed production.

In 1985, to my great surprise,I got a big honor when I wasrecommended for an IRRI award

as an outstanding farmer. Mywife, Surjit, was also invited but,because of family reasons, shecouldnt accompany me. It was agreat occasion. I was so excited andelated that such a huge internationalhonor would come to mesomethingI had never even dreamed of. Itwas gratifying to meet the 13 otherAsian farmers recognized that day.I was unique [among that group]because I was a seed producer.

On 5 June 1985, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) honored 14 exceptional farmers in 10 Asian nationstruly

pioneers in their own riteby inviting them to the Philippines to participate in a special multilevel symposium that brought

together outstanding scientists, farmers, and political leadersall part of IRRIs 25th anniversary celebration. As IRRI

approaches its 50th anniversary in 2010, we are trying to locate these same farmers 25 years later to find out their progress

and get some updates. The first one we found is Sardar Jagjit Singh Hara who farms in Punjab, the breadbasket state of India.

In November 2008, departing Rice Todayeditor Adam Barclay and I visited him on his farm about 12 km outside of Ludhiana.He was billed as a progressive Punjabi seed farmer 25 years ago. Since his recognition then, Mr. Hara has often been visited by

agricultural researchers and leaders who have come to see and evaluate his farming practices. Perhaps the most dramatic visit

was the simultaneous appearance of a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and a future World Food Prize Laureate on the same day.

I returned home with a chargedbattery because I had seen so manyeld trials at the IRRI research

centerhow to add fertilizer, thelatest hybrid rice technology, etc.

I wanted to share those things Ilearned with my fellow farmers here.I acquired this culture of sharingexperiences from the InternationalFarm Youth Exchange Program inAmerica, which I attended in 1966.Generally, people want to keep theirknowledge to themselves, maybe toput it in book form and sell it. But Ihad a commitment, a vow, to sharemy experiences, such as those I hadat IRRI. When I came back from

IRRI, around 100 farmers cameto me and asked many questions,which I tried to answer. So, I wouldsay I was married to IRRI.

Two more memorable occasionsOn 22 April 1987, one great occasionhappened. Norman E. Borlaug [the1970 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate]visited me on my farm and, justby coincidence Gurdev S. Khush[IRRIs then principal plant breederand future 1996 World Food PrizeLaureate] also came. So, hangingon my wall now is a unique and rarepicture (photo opposite page) of thesetwo world-renowned scientistsawheat breeder [Borlaug center] anda rice breederwith one fortunate

farmer. It is difcult to describein words how I felt that day.

In September 1991, [the thenIRRI director general, 1988-95]Dr. Klaus Lampe visited the nearbyPunjab Agricultural University (PAU),an institution I am deeply associatedwith. They told him about me, thatI am an IRRI outstanding farmerawardee, and so he came to see me.When he saw my setup, he invited meto come to IRRI again. I told him, Dr.

ADAMB

ARCLAY

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Lampe, some of my farmer friends

want to come with me. He said,Okay, we cannot pay your airfares,but all other arrangements for yourstay will be taken care of by IRRI.Six of us came to IRRI in September-October 1992. It was a wonderfuloccasion. In my life, I have had manygreat experiences, but my two visitsto IRRI and the visits of Drs. Borlaugand Khush to my farm on the sameday are the most memorable ones.

Hara farma showcase forthe rice-wheat rotationToday, our farm is a joint familyventure of 60 acres (around 25hectares). Since my brother worksin California, in the U.S., as anelectrical engineer, I manage thingsaround here. This is a large-scaledemonstration farm, which is stillin the process of resolving a bigcontroversy. There is an ongoingdebate in Punjab and all over Indiaconcerning whether or not wheat

and paddy can be protably grownin rotation. But when disbelieverscome to my farm, I can proveto them that these two maincereals can be grown together.

Prior to the Green Revolution,rice was not popular in Punjab. Itwas grown only in the low-lyingareas along the riverbeds and wasnot a regular crop like wheat, cotton,corn, etc. But, with the arrival ofIR8 in India in the 1960s, along

with the package of practices for the

Punjab cropping pattern, the crophas been grown here ever since eventhough the water table is gettinglower in this part of the country.

Previously, government expertscouldnt convince farmers totransplant late. They transplantedearly because there was a lack ofmechanization, and diseases andinsect pests were less of a problem.Recently, the government persuadedmany farmers not to transplantbefore 10

June. Now, this year [2008],

the results are very good. The watertable is recharged and, luckily, themonsoon has also been favorable.

Wheat and rice are like twowheels on the same vehicle. If onewheel goes down, the other wheelcannot function either. I thinkthese two wheels, wheat and rice,complement each other. This year,the yields and the price of bothcrops have been good, rice witha slight edge over wheat, I think.

Most importantly, we are feedingthe people. I feel proud that Improducing good-quality seeds formy farmer friends so that they canhave better and better yields (Formore on South Asias rice-wheatcropping system, seeStrengtheningthe systemon pages 18-23).

Convincing the young thatagriculture is a noble profession[In his 1985 interview, Mr. Hara

said that he would not pressure hisson, Gurshaminder, to follow in hisfootsteps on the farm. And, trueenough, Dr. G. Hara is a seniorconsultant surgeon at the OswalCancer Treatment and ResearchFoundation in Ludhiana. Nownearing 70, Mr. Hara worries about

who will take over the family farmmaybe his grandson, Tejeshwar,but that is by no means certain.]

It is a burning issue these daysthat no young educated, dedicatedperson wants to be in agriculture.Why? First, it is a very hard job.Second, opportunities for growthare limited. Most importantly,agriculture in developing economieslike Indias is considered as a wayof living, not as a profession. Whentrying to persuade my only son to

stay on the farm, I suggested thathe would get an opportunity to goabroad to see farms in America andAustralia and to observe the researchtrials and experiments at IRRI. Buthe ultimately still said, No. Whatis life on the farm? You work like ahorse and there is no social life.

Indeed, professions in the cityare more glamorous and the currentgeneration is more money-mindedrather than service-oriented. Whyam I in agriculture? I wanted to beindependent and to not be tied tothe monotony of the same chair inthe same ofce with the same job.And, secondly, God is my boss. Ilearned to drive on a John Deeretractor when I was 13 years oldand that hooked me on agriculturedespite the drudgery and the risk.

Now, the situation is changing;the world is crying for food security.I hope good sense will prevail andthat, someday soon, the world will

declare agriculture to be a nobleprofession just like medicine, law,and education.

In the complete transcript of thisinterview at irri.org/today/Pioneer_Interviews.asp, Mr. Hara discussesmechanization, water management,economics, and the major challengestoday in Punjabi agriculture.

HARAFAMILYARCHIVES



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Rice TodayJuly-September 2009

a cross-section of opinions


Challenges for IRRI:

In a departure from presenting excerpts of a single pioneer interview, this installment presents a diverse

cross-section of responses to one question: As IRRI approaches its 50th anniversary in 2010, what do you

see as the Institutes greatest challenge? Interviews were conducted between June 2006 and June 2009.

More will be added online as interviews continue

Rice TodayJuly-September 2009 17

Barker Brad y Cantrell

Randy Barker, IRRI agricul-tural economist and head,Economics Department,1966-78; acting head, SocialSciences Division, 2007-08

When I rst came to IRRI in1966 just before IR8, people atthat time looked at IRRI and said,thats a nice set of buildings, butthey didnt think the Institute wouldever produce anything. There wasa real skepticism about whetherIRRI would ever amount to much.Joining IRRI was like buying into astock that all of a sudden took off.

In the early days, the IRRImandate was fairly simple andstraightforward, increase riceproduction in Asia, and so the focusand the priorities were there. Sincethat time, weve gone from foodsecurity to environment and poverty

and other areas. So, in many ways,the mandates of IRRI and of theother centers tended to expand.

The real challenge now is beingsure that IRRI operates in the areawhere it has the greatest comparativeadvantage. For example, the challengefor upstream work is to have theappropriate connections with theadvanced institutions for developingbiotechnology research. When goingdownstream, this means, in part, the

ability to transfer someof that biotechnologyexpertise and focus iton those areas thatwill complement whatthe NARES [nationalagricultural researchand extensionsystems] are doing.

Nyle C. Brady, IRRIdirector general, 1973-81

I think IRRI needs to makeeffective use of biotechnology andother modern research tools to helpthe plant breeders develop rice linesthat efciently utilize plant nutrients,that tolerate adverse conditions suchas drought, and that are resistantto insects and diseases, therebyreducing the need for pesticides.

To do this, IRRI must havelinkages with scientists in both the

developing and the more developedcountries. This is an advice which thewhole CGIAR [Consultative Group onInternational Agricultural Research]system could accept. I recognize thepolitical reasons why this is difcultbecause some countries dont wantbiotechnology to be used for thispurpose. But the developing countriesneed the improved crops much morethan we do in the U.S. So, I think thisis the direction in which IRRI and

other such centersshould and could go.

IRRI mustalso continueto push what ithas been doing

latelymoreafter I leftthan when I

was theretorecognize the

consequences ofwhat we do to the environment interms of pesticide useand fertilizeruse, that is, nitrogen getting intothe water causing troubles later on.This is being done, but I think evenmore can be done. I think this is anopportunity for IRRI to develop highyields of quality rice in such a waythat the soil, water, and atmospherewill not be adversely affected.

Ronald Cantrell, IRRIdirector general, 1998-2004

Clearly, it is the funding issue.What comes with the fundinguncertainty is creating some difcultyin hiring staff. IRRI has been able tocontinue to hire good internationalstaff. But there is uncertainty causedby restricted core funding andthe threat of the loss of all USAIDfunding [in July 2008]. If you area bright young scientist just out of

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Rice TodayJuly-September 200918 Rice TodayJuly-September 2009

ffman Swaminathan Hargrove Khush

graduate school, do you want to take achance on starting your career there?There meaning not necessarilyIRRI but there meaning in thatkind of system. So, unless there aresome things that will stabilize thefunding, it may create some problemsfor IRRI in the future of being able tohire international staff. I think thatis the greatest challenge that IRRIwill face. The culture of the Institute

is rich; its great. I just think it needsto have a more stable environment.

Kwanchai Gomez, IRRI headstatistician, 1968-93; liaison forcoordination and planning, 1993-96; consultant, 1997-98

I think IRRIs greatest challengeis to dene clearly the kind ofcontributions it still can make tothe rice world. IRRI cannot justkeep doing the same things it didat the start. IRRI has come a longway [47 years as of the time of theinterview] and the rice problems ofthe world have changed drastically.IRRI must dene what its presentgoals are; who are its clients andwhat are their expectations? Whatdoes the rice world need and whatand how can IRRI contribute?

Its true that IRRI is an aginginstitution, and it may not be easy tore-dene its goal, its mandate, andadapt new strategies and directionsat this point in time. But, unlike old

people, it is still easier to revive andrenew an old institution. And I thinkIRRI should be able to nd the way.

IRRI has a new strategic plan,Bringing hope, improving lives.Some see it simply as a patch-up job of what it is doing now ormaintaining a status quo. Whenevera strategic plan is developed purelyby the people from inside theinstitution, it carries too muchbaggage; its heavy. Who will work

on a strategy and work plan that willput them out of their jobs tomorrow?Nobody, of course! I myself hadworked closely with the rst IRRIstrategic plan; I should know.

Ronnie Coffman, IRRI plantbreeder, 1971-81; currently chair,Department of Plant Breeding& Genetics, and director ofInternational Programs, CornellUniversity

Global warming and the riseof sea level could prove to be thegreatest challenges for IRRI, forplant breeding, and for rice sciencein general because, as you know,the majority of rice is found in thelarge low-lying river deltas of Asia.The Ganges, the Brahmaputra, theIrrawaddy, the Mekong, all thosebig deltas are, in some cases, onlya few inches above sea level. So,right now, the minimum predictionfor sea-level rise is a conservativeprojection of 38 inches by themiddle of this century. This willobliterate places like Bangladesh,West Bengal, and the Mekong Delta.

This is huge. So, what willhappen, slowly, or maybe not soslowly, is that brackish water will getpushed up the rivers and affect thegrowth of the rice. And you get lessand less fresh water coming downbecause glaciers are melting in theHimalaya at the rate that people

can't believe. So, you're going to geta scarcity of fresh water and thenthe rising sea level that pushes in thebrackish water. That's going to pushthe cultivation of rice way back in agradual, or maybe not so gradual,manner. So, salinity tolerance mightoffer some help. But I think theglobal warming and the resultingrise in sea levelsand rememberthat 38 inches is the minimumprediction; others are predicting

more and fasterthat portendsa real crisis in rice cultivation.

M.S. Swaminathan, IRRIdirector general, 1982-88;currently chairman of theM.S. Swaminathan ResearchFoundation

There are challenges and Imsure IRRI is aware of them as itmodies its mandate. During its rstdecade [1960s], IRRIs challenge

was to improve productivity. Thesecond decade had the challenge ofputting it into a farming systemsbackground. During my decade, wehad the challenge of mainstreamingconsiderations of ecology and equityin technology development anddissemination and also buildingnational rice research institutions,including one in the Philippines.

IRRIs greatest challengestoday are against the backdrop ofglobalization. The UN MillenniumDevelopment Goals (MDGs) presenta challenge for IRRI because, for40% of the worlds population, riceis a staple. So, the very rst MDG,reducing hunger and reducingpoverty, depends greatly on IRRIswork, along with its nationalpartners. So, there is a greatresponsibility. Then, of course, MDGnumber 3 is gender equality andempowerment of women, whereagain IRRI has been the agship

of the gender equity movementin the world, the rst scienticinstitution, which started stronggender mainstreaming of its work. Iwould say the number-one challengeis this new vision for IRRI, whichplaces poverty alleviation and hungerelimination at the top of its agenda.

Another challenge is dealing withthe public/private partnerships inan IPR [intellectual property rights]environment. As they commonly


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GENE

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A career with the Rockefeller Foundation

A

fter graduating from the State

University of New York at

Buffalo, I received a fellowship

from the U.S. Public Health

Service that sent me to the University

of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,

where I spent 5 years getting my PhD

degree in microbiology. When I was

looking around for a job at the end of

that training period, the Rockefeller

Foundation (RF) contacted me about

a new type of postdoctoral fellowship

they had, for which one worked with the

Foundation while also pursuing some

research at a nearby research institute.

I received one of those fellowships and,

within a year, I was made a programofcer of the Rockefeller Foundation. So,

for almost my entire career, which is now

38 years, I have been a program ofcer

in the New York ofce of the Rockefeller

Foundation.

In my opinion, IRRI is one of the

Rockefeller Foundations great success

stories. The whole idea for IRRI came

out of the Foundation. It was based

on what Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Norman Borlaug had accomplished with

wheat. The thinking was, if you could

breed for wheat in Mexico and have

those varieties adopted over the vast

areas of South Asia, maybe you could

breed for rice in a single location and

have those varieties, or at least those

breeding lines, be used across the vast

areas of Asia where rice is grown. So,

the Rockefeller Foundation convinced

the Ford Foundation to partner with it to

create IRRI. Within 3 or 4 years, IRRIs

rst variety, IR8, came out and had a

huge impact throughout South Asia and

other regions. But, many more fruits

were to come from the Rockefeller-IRRI

association over the next four and a half

decades.

I was trained as a microbiologist andthat meant molecular biology as well. So,

when the Foundation, in the late 1970s

to early 1980s, decided to move into

applying the new tools of molecular and

cellular biology to crop improvement, I

was one of the people on the staff who

knew something about molecular biology

and I assumed more responsibility for the

Foundations investments in that area.

Once the Rice Biotechnology Program

began in 1984, I, more or less, ran that

program from the New York ofce. We

also had John OToole, a former IRRI

agronomist and rice physiologist [1974-

84], working in the program, initially

from India and then from Bangkok; and

Tosh Murashige helping in China, Korea,

and the Philippines.

In recent years, we are working more

in Africa. So, I spend a lot of time on the

African Program today. But, I have to

say that the most rewarding work I have

done with the Foundation was from 1984

to 2002, when we invested about US$120

million in the Rice Biotechnology

Program. I worked very closely with

IRRI during that whole period.

The RF changes coursefrom doing tofundingIn 1980, Dr. Richard W. Lyman became

the president of the Foundation. His

feeling was that foundations really

should not be operational. They should

be organizations that provide funds to

others who get the job done. In the case

of agriculture, he congratulated us for

helping establish IRRI, the International

Maize and Wheat Improvement Center

(CIMMYT), the International Center

Rock and Rice:

The Rockefeller-IRRI biotechnology sagaNext year, 2010, marks not only the International Rice Research Institutes (IRRI) 50th anniversary but also a half century of

collaboration between the Institute and its co-founder, the Rockefeller Foundation. This includes an alliance that started a quarter

century ago to help create the new discipline of rice biotechnology. When that effort began in 1984, Gary Toenniessen, currently a

managing director of the Foundation, led the charge to bring the new developments in molecular and cellular biology to rice. In this

interview, he shows what can be accomplished with around US$120 million of funding and a cornucopia of ideas.

21Rice TodayOctober-December 2009


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for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the

International Institute of Tropical

Agriculture (IITA), and a number of

the other international centers, and also

for creating mechanisms, such as the

Consultative Group on International

Agricultural Research (CGIAR), to fund

those centers.

At about that time, a team of

external advisors agreed with Dr.

Lyman that it was now possible for the

Foundation to bring its eld operationsto a close. In fact, I can remember their

report stating that, in many ways, the

era in which expatriate scientists go out

and actually do research was coming to

a close, and what the Foundation should

really do is to nd ways of supporting

international centers and strengthening

existing national programs. So, the

advisors recommended that the

Foundation work in two principal areas.

One was to make sure that the new

advances that were occurring in cellular

and molecular biology were applied to

tropical crops important in developing

countries and the staple foods of the

poor in those countries. Second, the

Foundation should develop a strategy

for Africa, where the food situation was

deteriorating.

Creating rice biotechnologySo, we then moved quite quickly to

implement the rst recommendation,which was to apply the new

developments in molecular and cellular

biology to tropical crops. Dr. Alva App,

a new RF director of agriculture, came

in. Al had actually spent about 6 years

[1976-82] at IRRI as a visiting scientist,

seconded to IRRI as an employee of

the Boyce Thompson Institute for

Plant Research to lead the work on the

Azolla[a tiny nitrogen-xing fern]rice

combination. So, its clear to me that,

from the time Al arrived, we were

going to work on rice because he quite

correctly recognized its importance.

But, I still conducted a very systematic

process of looking at the eight most

important crops in determining whether

or not the breeding programs were

strong enough in those crops to make it

reasonable to introduce a biotechnology

program and what the impact would

be if the Foundation did do that. When

we compared all of the results, ricewas clearly at the top. We could build

on what were already strong breeding

programs. IRRI was there, so we had

a strong partner to work with and, of

course, rice fed more people than any

other crop.

First of all, we received approval

from our trustees to make a major

long-term commitment. So, the initial

document that went to the Foundations

trustees in December 1984 informed

In October 1995 on the IRRI farm during the Foundations Rice Biotechnology Meeting held in conjunction with Rice Genetics III, Dr. Toenniessen (3rd from left)confers with (from left) Gurdev Khush, IRRI rice breeder and principal scientist, 1967-2001; Ken Fischer, IRRI deputy director general for research, 1991-99;Darshan Brar, IRRI rice breeder and currently head of the Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Biotechnology Division (PBGB); John OToole, IRRI agronomist and ricephysiologist, 1974-84, and later Foundation associate director; Zhikang Li, IRRI molecular geneticist and currently coordinator of the International Network forMolecular Breeding, Beijing; Robert Herdt, IRRI economist, 1973-83, head, IRRI Economics Department, 1978-83, and later Foundation director, agriculturalsciences, and vice president; and Swapan Datta, IRRI senior scientist in PBGB, 1993-2005, and currently deputy director general for crop science, Indian Councilof Agricultural Research.



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them that this was likely to be a 15-year-

long program, or longer, and, at that time,

we said that the Foundation was likely to

commit US$80 million or more. If you

actually adjust $80 million for ination

over that period of time, it comes out to

about $120 million.

We designed the program to have

three major components. The rst was to

create rice biotechnology. Molecular

biology was a brand new discipline in

the early 1980s and there was nobody

in the world except for a few Japanese

who were doing serious work on

rice molecular biology. IRRI had no

biotechnology program. There were no

rice molecular biology programs in the

United States. So, it was a wide-open

opportunity for the Foundation to lead

the effort to really create a signicant

biotechnology research program for the

most important food crop in the world.Creating the technology meant

creating a molecular genetic map of rice

and then creating the tools that would

allow the genetic engineering of rice. It

meant understanding the way the rice

genome is structured, and understanding

at the molecular level the relationship

between rice and rice pathogens. There

was a lot of investment in those basic

tools that make up the set of technologies

that we call biotechnology.

Finding relevant traitsThe second component was to work on

the traits for which one would want to use

those tools, once available, to introduce

into rice. But, we needed to understand

those traits at the molecular level in

order to use those tools. We hired Bob

Herdt [IRRI economist, 1973-83; head

of the IRRI Economics Department,1978-83; later, director for agricultural

sciences at RF and vice president;

see his tribute to Norman Borlaug,

passion, persistence, and persuasion,

pages 32-34] as our colleague at that

time. Previously, his job at IRRI had

been to prioritize traits that IRRI

was going to work on so he had

already developed the methodology

for prioritizing traits. He did the

same thing for the Foundations rice

biotechnology program.

It is basically a technique thatmeasures the yield forgone because

you do not have that t rait. For example, at

that particular time, there were no known

genes for resistance to the rice tungro

virus, which, at that time, was causing

a lot of problems in the Philippines and

other countries in Southeast Asia. So,

that turned out to be very high on his

list of priorities. There were reasons to

believe that biotechnology would work

as a way of addressing the tungro virus.

Bob outlined our research priorities for

rice biotechnology in the 1991 book

Rice Biotechnology, which IRRI breeder

Gurdev Khush and I edited [see http://

snipurl.com/qv0uh].

Building molecular biology capacityin AsiaThe third component was capacity

building in Asian rice research

institutions. In countries such as India,

China, Thailand, and the Philippines,

we tried to link the more fundamental

research programs with the rice researchinstitutions within those countries. That

involved a lot of training. During that

17- to 18-year period, the Foundation

supported about 400 fellowships for

Asian scientists. Many went to advanced

laboratories in the U.S., Europe,

Australia, and Japan, where we were

funding

Documents

The IRRI Pioneer Interviews