IRRI's Greatest Challenges Today: Dave Mackill Pioneer Interview

See full interview at http://archive.irri.org/publications/today/Mackill.asp and Rice Today article at http://irri.org/knowledge/publications/rice-today/special-reports/people/a-ri...

In this Pioneer Interview excerpt, David Mackill, who departed the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI; http://irri.org ) as a principal scientist in the Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Biotechnology Division in February 2011, discusses the greatest challenges that IRRI faces today.

He was the program leader for rainfed rice production at IRRI and led the development of more than 20 rice cultivars adapted to the challenging growing conditions in southern Asia. He also oversaw the IRRI project Stress-Tolerant Rice for Poor Farmers in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa or STRASA - http://www.icrisat.org - for which he helped secure a grant worth US$19.9 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Over the last 28 years, Dr. Mackill held critical positions for rice genetics and breeding, including 10 years as a U.S. Department of Agriculture research geneticist stationed at the University of California, Davis.

In the last 17 years, Dr. Mackill and colleagues identified and transferred a gene conferring submergence tolerance into new high-yielding rice varieties. Monsoonal rains plague southern Asia with flooding that destroys crops. These new rice strains are being adopted on a large scale and will translate into millions of tons of new rice for developing countries. He is now the strategic rice expert within the research and development arm of Mars Incorporated.

Interview excerpt on IRRI's greatest challenges today:

"I think there's a need for IRRI and it has a role to fulfill, especially in terms of coordinating efforts across different countries and different regions—and doing some of the long-term basic research that some of the national programs may not be able to do. That's the continuing role for IRRI.

Another challenge is to keep our focus on trying to improve the national programs and make them stronger so that they can take on more of the work themselves. We shouldn't be replacing the research activities of the national programs but we should be trying to support them. So, the fact that they still need IRRI to do some of the breeding and work is probably not a good sign. We need to really step up the opportunities for training, for advanced degrees and getting more students to come as postdocs, and scholars.

We also have the challenge of making the maximum use of the new technologies. I think we've come a long way in that area but the technologies are advancing rapidly and it's been difficult to invest in equipment when the equipment needed changes every few years. And we really have to develop stronger relationships with advanced institutions and perhaps also the private sector to take advantages of the latest developments and to try to make ourselves more efficient in breeding.

There are a lot of new things coming out now and we're not going to be able to take all these activities on board ourselves. We need to do it in collaboration. So that's one of the things that must happen and so IRRI has been working more on these big collaborative projects. At the same time, I feel that we should maintain our strength in applied breeding work that we can do here at IRRI because we have the field facilities and we're investing more in these facilities. We also have very good linkages with the national program so that makes IRRI attractive for advanced institutes to collaborate with."

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