Manila, The Philippines
March 7, 2008
Source:
PhilRice
The 21st National Rice Research
and Development (R&D) Conference is set next week March 11-13 at
the PhilRice Central Experiment Station in Maligaya, Science
City of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija. This year’s conference theme is
“Addressing poverty and malnutrition through rice R&D.”
The three-day event held annually by
PhilRice will bring
together updates and developments on rice R&D conducted by the
rice R&D network members nationwide. More than 500 rice
scientists, R&D workers from agencies under the Department of
Agriculture, state universities and colleges, local government
units, non-government and people’s organizations, and
farmer-leaders are expected to attend the scientific meeting.
This year’s theme will focus on the technologies and strategies
that enhance productivity and sustainability of the rice
industry. It will also highlight the models being used to
efficiently promote new technologies for better adoption.
During the conference, PhilRice’s economic impact on its
stakeholders and to the country as a whole will also be
presented.
PhilRice relentlessly strives to live up to the expectations of
the Filipino farmers. Many accounts say that PhilRice has
revolutionized the Philippine farming systems and has
contributed to the country’s development in general especially
in the agriculture sector. With the country’s gruesome poverty
and malnutrition situation, PhilRice aligns its efforts to
conceptualizing and implementing more comprehensive programs
that would answer these pressing issues.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) noted that
protein-energy malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies
remain the leading nutritional problems in the Philippines. In
addition, FAO confirmed that about 12 million Filipinos are
underweight while about 28 million are unable to buy food to
meet their nutritional requirements and other basic needs. The
Social Weather Stations’ (SWS) December 2007 report noted that
about 2.9M Filipino families suffered from involuntary hunger
(no food to eat) for the last three months.
To address this, recent PhilRice researches are geared toward
the development of locally adapted technologies that will
provide consumers with higher yield and more nutritional values.
These include breeding of varieties that are vitamin-enriched
and resistant to major diseases.
In addition, the conference will also showcase research
presentations on rice technology generation and promotion,
scientific poster viewing, launching of new knowledge products,
and exhibit of rice technologies.
Farmers’ Field Days, which will showcase the experiments on the
100-hectare experimental farm of PhilRice, will be held on the
first two days (March 11-12) of the event. PhilRice's Technology
Management and Services Division is expecting more than 2,000
farmers who will witness the PhilRice-generated technologies on
rice and rice-based farming systems.
“Technologies generated from rice R&D so far address poverty and
malnutrition. Rice R&D can contribute to the improvement of the
possible productivity and sustainability options that farmers
can employ in alleviating their poverty conditions,” says
PhilRice Executive Director Leocadio S. Sebastian.
“We need to enhance the transfer of results of R&D whether it be
knowledge or technologies so that farmers can benefit from
them,” Dr. Sebastian adds.
With the members of the National Rice R&D Network during the
conference, PhilRice hopes to identify concrete pathways that
will unshackle policy and institutional bottlenecks and push the
full potentials of rice R&D to address poverty among rice
farmers. |
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