Developing Country
Collaboration (DCC) Proposal submitted to the NSF
Title:
Development of a short-course at IRRI entitled Rice: research to
production
PI: Susan R.
McCouch
Problem:
The community
of researchers interested in studying rice as a model genetic/crop
system is growing rapidly, thanks to the large investments in rice
genome sequencing and functional genomics made by US funding agencies
and the international community over the last decade. However,
many young scientists who would like to work on rice, particularly
those from the US and Europe, have little or no familiarity with the
organism, find it difficult to grow and are disconnected from the
large, international community of rice scientists who understand the
significance of rice in its biological, social, economic and cultural
context. We propose to address this problem by helping to bridge
these communities. Our objective is to help create a new generation
of rice researchers by encouraging them to develop a “feeling
for the organism”, a connection to the international community,
a global vision of science and to understand the value of innovation
in outreach, education and public service.
Relevance
and Justification:
Rice: research to
production is a short (3 week), intensive course that represents
the first step in establishing a student-oriented, training and
shuttle research program between US universities and the
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. It
will be offered every year at IRRI and aims to give participants the
opportunity to become familiar with rice production in its center of
diversity and to understand how it fits into the social and economic
context of Asia.
The program aims to capitalize on the
growing level of interest in rice as a genetic/crop model. Much
of the interest in the US is a direct result of the investments and
policies of the PRGP that emphasized public availability of data,
international collaboration among scientists and relevance of
research problems, particularly in relation to agriculture and the
genomics of crop plants. Through participation in such a course, we
seek to alert students and young professionals to the emerging
opportunities to bring together genomics-based plant science,
outreach and education, and public service as an attractive career
agenda.
The long-term objective of this Developing Country
Collaboration is to create an education partnership that will
mobilize a large pool of young talent to contribute to global
agricultural research and development.
Research Plan:
Rice: research to production is a 3 week
course that will start with an overview of all aspects of rice
science and rice production The course will include elements from
IRRI’s classic two-week "Rice Production Course" that
was offered for many years during the 1970-80’s. Participants
will have hands-on experiences in paddy preparation, transplanting of
young rice seedlings, weeding, measuring growth and development,
harvesting and threshing, with opportunities to handle farm machinery
and carabao. The course content will be enhanced by workshops dealing
with the germplasm collection, the seed health unit, the grain
quality laboratory and various other research units in Crop, Soil
& Water sciences, Plant Pathology & Entomology, and
Bioinformatics. Visits to rice mills and small-scale commercial rice
production farms will expose participants to real life rice
production in the tropical Philippines.
The initial offering
of the course is planned for January in 2007 with an intake of up to
25 participants from US universities and other research or
educational institutions in the USA, Europe and Asia. Within the
United States, participants in the first course will be selected from
a pool of graduate students and postdoctoral applicants, with
emphasis on postdocs shifting to rice research and graduate students
whose research focuses on rice as a model crop. We aim to recruit 12
US citizens for the Jan. 07 session to be funded by this DCC
grant.
Major goals and course
objectives: Our objectives are to provide
participants of this course with the following:
- an
understanding of the basics of rice production in Asia
- familiarity with the germplasm collection at IRRI and current
issues related to germplasm exchange and intellectual property
- an appreciation of the research issues of IRRI and its developing
country partners.
- hands-on skills relating to rice
breeding, molecular genetics and genomics
- an understanding
of how to structure effective international collaborations
- a plan and personal contacts to work effectively as part of the
international research community in the
future.