The world’s largest institute on rice research
Do you know that the world’s largest research center on rice is in the Philippines? The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), the biggest of its kind in the world, is stationed in the Philippines since the 1960s.
IRRI is located in Los Baños, Laguna, right beside the University of the Philippines. It is at IRRI where rice farmers from around the world come to study and learn new rice farming methods.
In the 1960s, the country was one of the world’s top rice producers, and, thus, was a logical site for the Institute’s headquarters.
IRRI was established by virtue of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. Its goal was to help develop and improve rice production technologies.
Today, it serves as a repository of the biggest rice germ plasma collection in the world, with rice genetic materials coming from various rice-producing countries from all over the globe.
The Institute’s research and work on rice - the staple grain to more than half of the world’s population – has attracted many scientists, prominent world leaders and personalities into the country.
US Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman, President Lyndon Johnson and philanthropist Laurance Rockefeller are just some of the few leaders who have come to visit IRRI and see its experimental and model farms in the country. It is indeed a pride that the Philippines is home to this rice think-tank.
The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is the primary organization engaged in the development of better rice production. It had helped a lot of countries from India, China, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia achieved rice self-sufficiency and had even become world rice exporters.
IRRI is one of the reasons behind the sustained world rice supply and we are proud it calls the Philippines its home.
Postcript: The Philippines ironically is an importer of Rice from the countries it helped to develop rice, on their own.
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