IRRI Pioneer Potpourri: Ron Cantrell on hybrid rice and private sector

Ron Cantrell (IRRI director general, 1998-2004) on public- private-sector cooperation and hybrid rice

In 1998, as I was becoming familiar with rice, it was obvious that rice is clearly a public-sector activity. Yet, that does not take into account clearly all of the equipment and processing that was done by the private sector. In terms of developing technology, clearly the private sector was involved in that. But, in terms of the germplasm and primarily the agronomic research that had been associated with germplasm, there was not a lot of private-sector involvement. I'm not saying there was none, but, if you look at where most of the technologies came from, they came from the public sector.

My concern for rice in this area is that, with the decline in funding from the public sector, if you look at other commodities, maize for example, as public-sector funding went down, private-sector funding went up. If you look at the producer, he wasn't being short-changed in terms of product. In other words, when I started school in the '60s, all major midwestern universities had a corn breeding program. Now, maybe two of them do, maybe three. But yet, the farmers still have a wide array of germplasm products coming out every year—new ones from the private sector. Now, are we going to have that in rice? In other words, as public-sector funding goes down, is the private sector going to step forward—and that's the real issue.

Now, one of the things that has intrigued me about hybrids is I thought this would be a way for the private sector to get involved in rice. There are a lot of issues surrounding hybrid rice. There are problems that you have in rice that you don't have in sorghum, maize, and other hybrid products in terms of heterosis and production systems. I think it would be great if hybrids were successful because this is clearly something that would draw in private-sector support. Then, all of a sudden, we would start having product research being done by the private sector on rice germplasm.

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