IRRI—one of the Rockefeller Foundation's great success stories

In an IRRI Pioneer Interview, Gary Toenniessen, a managing director of The Rockefeller Foundation and long-time IRRI collaborator, states:

"In my opinion, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI; http://irri.org ) is one of the Rockefeller Foundations great success stories. The whole idea for IRRI came out of the Foundation. It was based on what Norman Borlaug had accomplished with wheat.

The thinking was if you could breed for wheat in Mexico and have those varieties be adopted over vast areas of South Asia maybe you could breed for rice in a single location and have those varieties or at least those breeding lines be used across vast areas of Asia where rice is grown.

So, the Rockefeller Foundation got the Ford Foundation to partner with it to create the International Rice Research Institute. Within 3 or 4 years, the first variety IR8 was coming out and had a huge impact here in the Philippines and even greater impact through South Asia and other regions."

See full interview at http://archive.irri.org/publications/today/Toenniessen.asp

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Science & Technology

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