October 30, 2002

The International Rice Research Institute in Los Banos, Philippines has one of the world's first digital
extension services for assisting government extension services, nongovernment organizations, and
others who provide information and support for farmers. The Rice Knowledge Bank is the very first
dedicated and comprehensive digital rice-production library.

According to Dr. Albert Atkinson of the IRRI Knowledge Bank, the system supports existing training
programs by providing a dynamic Internet portal that initially captures IRRI's 40 years of rice research
in digital form and aims over time to become the world's central rice training and knowledge
repository. It is also built to run on CD-ROM for areas without Internet access. Large modules can be
printed out and used independently of computers.

The Bank contains information that are classified into five categories: KnowledgeBytes, e-Learning,
Reference Guides, Decision Support Tools, and Biological Databases and Geographical Information
Systems.

For more information about the Rice Knowledge Bank visit http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org

Crop Biotech Update is a weekly summary of world developments in agri-biotech for developing countries, produced by the Global Knowledge Center on Crop Biotechnology, International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications SEAsiaCenter (ISAAA), and AgBiotechNet. For more information, visit http://www.isaaa.org/kc/