'Father of hybrid rice' Yuan Longping speaks in consortium meeting

Yuan Longping, regarded as the 'father of hybrid rice,' gave the keynote speech during the sixth annual meeting of members of the Hybrid Rice Development Consortium (HRDC) on 2 April. Professor Yuan  talked about progress made in the breeding of 'super hybrid rice.'

Other topics discussed during the meeting were:

• IRRI's new breeding structure (Eero Nissila)
• Rice supply, demand, and trade market outlook (Sam Mohanty, IRRI) 
• Progress of hybrid rice R&D at CIAT (Edgar Torres)
• PRISM: Crop monitoring system (Tri Deri Setiyono)
• Mechanized hybrid rice production in the U.S. (Jose Plaza, RiceTec)
• Disease screening and marker lab service for HRDC members (Michael Thomson and Casiana Vera Cruz)
• HRDC report (Fangming Xie)
• MTA for hybrid rice materials at IRRI (Elsie Quaite-Randall)

The HRDC has 82 members from both the public and the private sector. The meeting was held at IRRI Headquarters in Los Baños.

Participants visited the Grain Quality and Nutrition Center, Genotyping Services Laboratory, Blast Nursery, and the HRDC Multilocation Replicated Yield Trial.

They also made selections of early-generation breeding lines (F2 and F3 stages) on 1 and 3 April, and attended the 1st National Hybrid Rice Congress (3-5 April) organized by PhilRice and the Philippine Department of Agriculture.




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