This week we were privileged in visiting the international
rice research institute (IRRI) in Manilla. We were joined by Jim Geltch a 1986
scholar who contributed greatly to the studies. The institute is positioned
perfectly with science, technology and funding and I have wanted to visit IRRI
because I was intrigued that Bill Gates is the major philanthropic investor,
initially I thought it was for commercial interest in Agriculture but it is due
to the ability that rice has as the largest staple food in the world to address
poverty and starvation. 3.5 Billion people worldwide depend on rice for their
Daily Calorie intake and consume in excess of 100kg per person per year. There
are 200 million rice farms in Asia and the institute is focused on accelerating
quality and efficiency through trials on the 110 thousand varieties they have
accumulated. The greatest advance in Rice is through their work on gene mapping
the top 3000 commercial varieties to identify resistance to particular diseases
and pests and to create higher yields with fewer inputs. It is good to note
that in the sheep industry we have mapped all the genes recently at UNE, this
information will be vital for selection parameters for identifying hybrid sheep
with in flocks and has altered the course of my project to a molecular level.
Instead of visual appraisals to determine traits we can utilise gene mapping
individual sheep as the costs of marking will reduce significantly in the
future.
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