 Welcome everyone to our bioengine platform. This is our 10th webinar in the Swiss and today we have a great primary scientist in hybrid rice, rice research, Dr. Jahar Ali from the Erie Philippines. Jacinta will introduce him. Neha will be co-host this Zoom platform and shorted out the questions and the attendees reply. Shoma will help us to interview to Alisa and I request all of you, if you have any question related to today's box, please clearly mention in your chat box and hear the question answer box in the Zoom. It's specific and related to today's topic only. Those are the younger and young viewers. I request all of you don't answer about your certificate and password. This will be provided at the end of the talk and I'm sure you all are getting this link and password. So please don't comment in from the very beginning. It's very difficult to pick up the right question for the talk. So be patient. We will give it to at the end of this talk. I must thank Paul to Jahar Sir for accepting our invitation. It is very new platform and it means a lot to us. I also thanks to Erie, thanks to their hybrid rice platform. They promoted this talk very well. I'm also very thankful to Global Plant Council. They also promoted this talk and we got so many so many registrations and so many excited plant scientists and plant biologists. So I request Jacinta to introduce our speaker. Thanks River. Welcome to today's webinar organized by Bioengine. Bioengine is a non-profit organization created to promote plant research worldwide. The seminar series has been designed to build a platform from where plant scientists can present their research to the world. We hope future scientists can gain perspective and inspiration by listening to the esteemed plant researchers talk about their scientific accomplishments and their thoughts on the future of plant science. We are grateful that many renowned scientists have accepted our invitation to share their research insights with us. We have had a huge response of more than 5,000 registrations for today's webinar. We are thankful to the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines for sharing and promoting today's webinar over social media. We're also thankful to the Global Plant Council for their encouragement for promoting today's webinar on their platform and social media. We also welcome the audience and thank them for their interest in the Bioengine webinars. It is our request to all viewers to please hold all questions for the question and answer round at the end of the presentation. You can type your questions related to today's talk in the Zoom Q&A box or in the YouTube comment box. You can apply for a certificate of attendance via the feedback link and the password will be provided after the presentation. Submission for the feedback form is mandatory to receive a certificate. Today's topic for the webinar is Climate Smart Rice Hybrids by Dr Jauha Ali, a senior scientist at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. Dr Ali, a hybrid rice breeder, is a pioneer in his field of research. He has significantly contributed to the development of multiple stress tolerant inbred and hybrid varieties and capacity building for strengthening global agricultural research. He has developed and characterised eight thermosensitive genic male sterile TGMS rice lines for which he was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis Research work in 1994. This work led to the discovery of the genetics of the TGMS gene and to the understanding that TG genes, TMS4 and TMS8, were unique and could be exploited. Using these materials led to the development of several TGMS based hybrids involving different centres. Currently Dr Ali has taken up two line hybrid rice breeding at Erie on a strong footing to deliver the two line hybrid rice technology in Asia. He has developed several low critical sterility temperature point TGMS lines that are currently in the verge of commercial exploitation. Also he has been instrumental to the development of the green super rice breeding technology at Erie being the project leader and the regional coordinator of the green super rice GSR project in Asia and eastern and southern Africa. Through this innovative approach he has bred and released 26 rice varieties in Asia and nominated nearly 104 GSR cultivars into national cooperative yield trials. He connects genomic resources and tools to breed superior high yielding multiple stress resistant rice varieties and hybrids. As lead and regional coordinator Dr Jauha Ali leads the development and targeting of improved rice materials through systematic testing, adaptive trials and varietal release for eight countries in Asia and five in eastern and southern Africa. 56 GSR inbreds and 22 hybrids have been released whereas 110 are nominated for national yield trials in different countries. Dr Ali has also established the Erie GSR breeding front in 2009 and produced more than 530 promising multiple stress tolerant materials shared with NARS partners Inja and Met. He has published more than 80 peer reviewed publications. He has also provided training to more than 2100 researchers especially on hybrid rice technology seed production and molecular breeding. I now request Dr Ali to begin his talk. If you could please share your screen with us. Thank you. Good day to all of you in whichever time zones you are on and I would first thank Sobrotho for organizing this event under the bioengine platform with his and I really they deserve congratulations for doing such a wonderful task in a global global scale and bringing the science to the scientific masses and it at no cost especially in this COVID times. I think this is exactly the reason we should congratulate all of us Shobho and his team and with that let me begin my talk on strengthening global food security through climate smart price hybrids. If you look at the security rather we should look at the food insecurity in the first place in order to do something for the food security. Food insecurity map published recently where it shows the current levels of food insecurity in many countries in Africa and Asia are in light orange color which shows the food security insecurities are very high but the situation still goes worse when the global population would be something like 9.7 billion people in 2050 and if you look at the map at that time it will be something like a very dark orange red which is a signal that we are heading towards that and among them the conditions under which we are going to raise this the food insecurity challenge meet this challenge will be under climate change and among the stresses if you look at the drought is picking up like anything and that means heat and drought would be the major factors that would determine how agriculture would survive especially the the most affected would be crop plants and the livestock's so this is a really a challenge that is coming in the coming days now securing the food under climate change is very very important and there are four elements the key elements there are plenty of them but I listed here four important elements out here the first one is basically the core ingredient that is the climate resilient crop varieties and hybrids this is not only for rice crop but for any variety for any crop cross crops food crops it is applicable and where we need to enhance the yield potential under both favorable and unfavorable environments and the same thing can be realized these hybrids and these varieties gets well expressed if your crop management technologies are properly associated with it and properly advanced to the the farming communities and the other side of the coin is also when you talk about food security we have to talk about the nutritional security as well and this is basically comes when we have to use where biofortification approaches and especially for food in secure and chronic regions of the world and above all this the conducive policies and action plans across the the policymakers in different countries to keep the food reachable at all to all at all times and that means the food availability its access affordability its utilization and stability is a very very important role in the food security plan and in this picture the hybrid rice technology is a very vital picture you have to understand the context here or if you have to sustain the higher yields and grain quality hybrid technology is very very suited for this kind of situation and in many countries where food security is a concern where limited land is there there is the best option is to switch to hybrid technology whether it is for rice or even for other crops as well where the per unit area productivity would be increased and coming to the self-sufficiency in rice production many countries have to keep their bowls filled at times when you remember when we had the food crisis in 2008 many countries were suffering from the food food were not in the shelves and and many of the countries close their export gates including India and countries like Thailand and Vietnam and all these countries but and that's the reason why self-sufficiency in many parts of the world is very important as far as food is concerned hybrid technology when you grow hybrids it gives about 25 to 30 yield advantage that means it frees up the land to other crops and other important utilization of the land if the inputs and the irrigation water is saved about 25 to 30 percent in the same proportion and the technology not only it generates a lot of rural employment and seed industry if you take a typical example of Hyderabad the surrounding areas of Hyderabad where the hybrid technology is one of the heart centers in India you see the rural employment in those villages if you go around people are well versed how to do see production and they are very good in managing those technologies very well now coming to the less dependence on rice imports many of the countries if they have to reduce their dependence on the imports then the best option again would be hybrid technology and especially when you compare with wheat wheat has surplus of right wheat available in the international market but if you look at the rice it's somewhere between it fluctuates between 25 million tons to 40 million tons in the international market and countries like China and India whenever there is any crisis they will mop up all this 25 to 30 million tons in no time and leaving many countries without any food so in the coming days this this phenomena would really would be of major concern so people at different levels at different countries they have to look how they can become less dependence on the rice imports and of course the it nurtures the seed industry to produce quality seeds not only for rice but also other crops and the quality seeds is the best method to deliver the good productivity and increased production in any country now if you look at this map the the the graph you see the the area outside hybrid rice spreading across outside China is almost now eight million hectares outside China and this is the potential of this growth in South Asia would go up to 15 million hectares whereas in South Asia especially Myanmar would be around five million hectares and the current area in China is around 16 million hectares so this is the the trajectory that we would expect in the coming days in order to feed the to meet the requirement of the extra food that is required as far as rice is concerned now if you look at the research challenges for hybrid breeding the first and foremost is the increasing the grain yield process can we increase the yield process beyond 25 percent that would attract the stability that kind of stability would attract the farmers to adopt hybrid rice technology then the question comes is can we breed multi-stress breeding for developing the parental lines that would match the market needs in the region and coming to the consumer and grain quality for the market of the target regions is very very important many times we always associate grain quality with especially of the hybrids in relation to the the Chinese food requirements where they prefer sticky rice so immediately the connotation goes that hybrids are sticky it's not so basmati hybrids have been created and they have been catered to the needs so we can cater to any particular need any kind of quality is possible through hybrid technology and then if you look at the the new technologies that are coming with the precision breeding approaches utilizing the informatics on genomics high throughput phenotyping and environments all this can be combined to create the precision breeding for hybrids as well and the genomic predictions and artificial intelligence and to to to identify heterotic combinations by this approach is feasible now it's not in the past that it were not feasible but now it's very feasible and many countries are looking at this as a big opportunity out here and the high out crossing trait breeding especially would increase the seed reproducibility so including Erie we are working on this particular topic and this is one of the biggest challenges if we can increase the hybrid seed reproducibility beyond three tons per hectare that means we can bring down the cost of the seed so that the farmers can adopt at lower cost of seeds coming to the reducing cost of hybrid seeds we can go to another level of introducing the two line hybrid technology where the process per se also increases and the key element out here is can we get low CSP or low critical sterility point temperature point parental lines below 24 degree centigrade now next to this what is the rank levels of the yield that we saw in our multi replicated trials MRYT trials in the HRDC platform we see that in recent times we see the increased the increased the process over the best check PSVR C82 we see about 30 percent and this is exactly we saw in our even in our actual trials on the socioeconomic trials conducted in the Philippines we see the similar number of 30 percent advantage of the hybrids over inbreds and I know that many would appreciate that this is the current level is between 25 to 30 percent yield advantage of the hybrids over inbreds now looking at the different market segments and we see the South Asia Bangladesh and India and we see the medium cylinder grain segment and mid early segment and in India mid early segment and you see the potential area that is that you see about eight million hectares and the yield advantages that is required in this if you look at the benchmark is around five eight to 10 percent over the existing best hybrid and over the the check hybrids about again 20 but if we are targeting around 25 to 30 percent in our screening approach and if you look at the key gaps that are presently in Indian context where lack of stress tolerant materials producibility the seed reproducibility lodging and false mud are some of the key traits likewise in Bangladesh the cold and disease resistance including drought and affinity tolerances so the same market needs that are required in Philippines and Indonesia is also very important like in Indonesia where the BPH with rugged stent virus and BLB and blast and drought are very important to close the gaps and likewise for Philippines we have multiple abiotic and biotic stress tolerances is required and much of this is also on the grain quality BLB, BPH and low head rice recovery are some of the key factors this context what climate smart rice hybrids could deliver so this is a concept again in order to create this type of hybrids that would have high and stable ease at the same time provide the abiotic stress tolerances multiple abiotic stress tolerance including drought, salinity, submergence and the biotic stress tolerances like BPH, BLB, blast major biotic stresses and it should match the grain quality features of the different market segments and market checks and amenable to direct seeded as well as transplanted conditions why I refer here on the direct seeded conditions is in the future we'll see that the direct seeding would become a kind of a trend because of the lack of availability of the irrigation water especially creating terminal droughts in even in irrigated areas and this type of direct seeded conditions would increase in the coming days and what are those things will be covered even in this talk and high resource use efficiency is another important trait if you look at the phosphorus and these especially phosphorus is basically from the rock phosphates these are going to deplete as we see as we go along coming towards 2050 that much of these are depleting resources and many of them are petroleum based resources where nitrogen fertilizers and all these are going to deplete as we are talking and we need a resource use efficiency on the prime topic that has to be in these hybrids as well and hybridized reproducibility of more than three tons per hectare is very very vital for us and meeting the market requirements of the target region is the core essence of this strategy now doing so we need to understand what is the meeting how we breed the parental lines for these future climatic conditions and among the major conditions that I look from a from a research perspective the drought and heat tolerance would be very very vital and this would directly affect many of these floral traits now if you look at the floral traits that the cms lines should have possess is the long stigmatic surfaces and high seed setting rates promoting more out crossing traits and likewise the restorers should have heavy pollen load and dehesants duration should be able to cover the the female parent and the climate resilient parents with ideal seed production traits especially higher combining ability disease resistance grain quality matching requirement of the market requirements all these are very would lead to eventual adoption or wide adoption of the hybrids I would like to tell one very important slide here this is which have been I've shown in many of my presentations in the past this is a very classic slide where this this experiment was conducted in Bahaul in in the Philippines where this former Apollinar Asa in Kandahai region 7 planted this we call this line GSRI R1-8 S6 S3 Y2 it's also called N6 RC 480 now and this guy planted this before before its release even in this region where the seawater inundates immediately once you when the nurseries are transplanted and in four days after transplanting he sees the seawater comes in because this is near to the coastline and after some days he sees the freshwater inundation of the heavy flooding causes four days of this complete submergence of one meter ahead over the plant height and then the plant recovers in the same place and you'll see the plant recovery in the same place and in the same place then drought strikes quickly in this place and where you will see where you'll see the uh the drought cracks in the field and at flowering you'll see the the crop it looks very good and the farmer is able to harvest in these circumstances where three major complex traits uh salinity followed by flooding and drought the farmer could harvest 1.2 tons when he never harvested anything in fact the farmer was smiling when the seawater came in he was so sure that nothing would survive and this is what happened was generally the farmer would not get any yield many of our GSR also were without any harvest in that particular when we tried five of the GSR varieties were planted in that situation the most interesting thing is what happens in the normal when the normal things prevailed the good season came uh then the the variety shot back to 7.23 tons and this shift is the very important reason why the Department of Agriculture in the Philippines took this very seriously and increased the adoption area of this particular plant it has been released as NCCAR C480 it was released in two conditions simultaneously in salinity and rain-fed drought and therefore it was named as GSR8 and it now occupies 0.7 million hectares in the Philippines and becomes the first truly climate smart rice across across the crops and this particular variety does very well in transplanted condition it does very well in the direct seeded conditions it has a very good cooking quality and it looks like this in a normal crop at 3 and it has the good cooking quality traits and very good in the saline and rain-fed environments and it's spreading into the irrigated areas as well we did a survey based on our socio economic scientists from UPLB professor uh europe who is a lead economist there and based on his estimations uh he found that nearly a million hectare has been covered in the in the in the Philippines alone and this particular variety touched about 0.7 million hectares and it's also very good for including iron toxicity areas so the reason why I try to show this is basically to give you the excitement how this the technology behind it is also illustrated here what went behind in breeding that particular variety one has to understand and this is a very important breeding strategy we call it as GSR breeding strategy and it was very very developed at eerie and it was evolved with the with the time tested over many many generations over the last 10 years and what happened is what happens here is we use the bc1 f2 generation you make a cross with one recipient highly adapted genotype and 10 to 15 restorer donor parents are crossed and you create bc1 f1 and bc1 f2 populations bulk populations these bulk populations are simultaneously screened for multiple abiotic and biotic stresses and this bc1 f2 is again progeny tested in bc1 f3 and then again a third round of testing to confirmation in bc1 f4 when you do three rounds you are comparing it with the best checks the the trade checks and the best yielding checks and and this is all carried out also on the normal irrigated conditions as well so we we use these materials around around 1500 intergression lines selective intergression lines are created which can be utilized for mapping trade mapping for any of the trades that you had screened and it it easily maps them and then you can use the the best yielding ones about 120 to create the the preliminary yield trials replicated trials basically and then advanced yield trial also replicated in dry and wet season two seasons to reduce the number to 60 from 120 and then this is sent to the multi-environment trials in different countries and the partners in 16 countries tested them and then they nominate into their national trials and eventually these varieties are released to the farmers now if any of these integration lines coming from two different donor parents but a common recipient parent can be used to make a cross that is called the design QTL permitting approach where you know a particular set of trades coming in one integration line but coming from a different donor line but the same but both share the same recipient parent and these two are selectively crossed based on the molecular data and in F2 again this is screened for two rounds because in two rounds you can fix the the homozygosity and in and it can go into the trials this is the advantage of this approach and this approach they both from Chinese Academy of Technology Sciences that shared the GSR varieties in their breeding systems as well as the ERIES main breeding program GSR breeding we could develop about 28 of the varieties were released from ERIES program and in total 56 were released and the last release is in India where AIR 56 done which is very important in the context because it is being released in Punjab, Haryana region and Hong Kong's on PR 126 is the is the recipient parent of this particular line so PR 126 is already covering 30 percent of the area in Punjab and because of its duration is 15 days earlier than PUSA 44 that makes the less irrigation water is required lesser chemicals lesser pesticides and it makes it very much fitting in the rice potato cropping system and that way the the this particular line can easily replace it because it has drought tolerance and salinity tolerance in addition to the E levels are much impressive than the first generation of GSR varieties so this gives us a lot of hope and there are more than hundreds of these type of materials in India nominated in the ERIES trials now if you look at the 28 of them is directly developed and at three and state adopted released and in target countries the record time was seven to nine years of time and 2.7 million hectares currently deployed 110 climate smart varieties from ERIES in the pipeline for release over the six countries and we'll have a look at those are look at these materials how they perform under a normal condition and in in low input condition under rainfight conditions and in what was the relative advantage of across different conditions we see that the many of the traits is more than 10 percent up to 30 percent you can see the advantage and these are the checks below and with which it is compared with the target traits that are used including unhybrid SL8 so what we we realize that that to adopt this into the hybrid building program we can create a similar set of recipient parent from a particular heterotic pool and creating the donor pool of 20 restorers we can create a similar set of approach where you screen multiple stresses in three rounds and then create a set of elite good combining ability backgrounds in the adaptable recipient parent and these restorers coming from the same heterotic pool we can create hundreds of these restorers with climatic suitable form climatic conditions and especially multiple abiotic and biotic stress problems so this is that approach this can be extended to even to the maintainer breeding programs so by this way we also use the what we call some of the trials that we created under irrigated low input and cold and salinity you can see the advantage of the materials and in our stress in drought is so severe that it kills the trial even we give about after 30 days of irrigation after transplanting we retract the irrigation in the drought plots creating near more than after 51 days there is no irrigation water in that field and that even kills much of the material so that is how we screen drought and when you want to combine I told you that when you have the common recipient parent like this particular cross had the common recipient parent huang huang zan and this was coming from one parent and this is coming from another parent but the same recipient parent if we can combine the restorer genes both are having restorer genes and then we screen them in different screens and these the selected ones are again redistributed to multiple screens and after that we can even do a sequencing or GPS genotyping of this material and based on this we can create the the best materials that can be released as inbreads as well as it can be used in the hybrid printing program now some of these two lines if you look at the design cutiel permitting lines were much stronger and much higher yielding than the the parental lines that we developed through the the regular approach of intervention printing so design cutiel permitting gave better yields under irrigated it touches something like 10.4 tons and just look at this type of materials is really a wonderful side to see these materials in the field and we used the gbs called tunable gbs from data to bio and this publication was done in frontiers and you can follow this just to give you an illustration after the bc1 f5 you can see the most of these loci are either homozygous or the the major homozygous or minor homozygous you don't see hetrozygous loci at all so the fixation of the the genotypes is within very rapidly done in three rounds of screening and that makes it to achieve the genetic gains much faster than expected by normal approach so these severe stresses causes the the rapid fixation and this process when we try to analyze the non-synonymous synapse in these materials and these circus diagrams can easily show you that the most of the color-coded green ones are the biotic stresses and the red ones are the the abiotic stress tolerances and the blue ones are the other stress related families you can see when we screen this material for these major genes known genes you can see many of these populations the integration lines had these genes selected by this approach so now we can easily know how to permit these integration lines by design and this is how the whole technology works not only that we can also map different target rates for different target rates for droughts salinity and we can easily get these peaks and with high load values and these have been mapped very well in many of the populations that we studied now to show the short many of these multistress now we're mostly in the restorer backgrounds and that made it easy for us when I took charge in 2016 made two on the hybridize immediately we initiated the crosses between the the stress tolerant with the cms lines and the tgms lines that we developed and made the crosses and we saw very easily that much of the process was scaled up beyond 20 and in in two line hybrids it even touched 40 and this is a very important beginning for developing the climate smart hybrids and today we have the first generation of hybrids ready and it is going to be tested in different parts of the world and the second generation would emerge when we convert the cms line also into climatic climate smartness traits into them and then when both sides the both the parents have these traits that will be the ultimate objective of our breeding program to develop the climate smart so basically to summarize it the genomics assisted hybridized parental line breeding what we did was basically the simultaneous multiple abiotic and biotech screening selection scheme is a very interesting approach by where we can employ early generation back cross breeding approach to screen for restorers and maintainer backgrounds by this innovative gsr breeding strategy where we can not only utilize for cutial discovery also for the hybridized development coming to the several promising parental line developed with multiple abiotic stresses are now currently used in the climate smart hybrid combinations and the genomic assisted breeding also helped us in understanding which crosses to be used for the design cutial permitting approach and permitted and stacked more genes for abiotic stresses over each other and then we can also pyramid non-allelic cutials or segments that can combine many of these traits from different donors into common recipient parent to develop the climate resilient hybrids in the as per design and needs. So at Erie what we are doing currently is we are trying to create heterotic pools and that has been now created and we use the 3k genomes that was used in our breeding program where more than 500 of these materials were used for directly in the multi stress breeding programs and now we have classified this our source nursery into different heterotic pools as you see on this side and now when you cross the widely wider genetic pools very likelihood that you will get good combinations and then we are employing the artificial intelligent technologies and also genomic prediction models and machine learning tools to predict the best combinations and to reduce the cost in identifying the best combinations and this way we have we can be sure of our success rate increases. So recently we published a paper on the heterosis breeding via genomic selection in rice and this paper was published with the UC Riverside Shijong Xu who is the scientist at UC Riverside and the the first author is a postdoc and she did this work and this is a wonderful work where they used the existing rice population of 1495 and using G-bluffs to perform the hybrid performance predictions. They could also not only replicate tenfold validations across prediction abilities on 10 agronomic traits that range between 0.35 to 0.92 but if you look at the yield prediction was 0.54 but major genes like grain length was 0.92 and now you can predict using this founder lines or you can predict even cross combinations without need of your parental lines to be in that set of founder lines. This would be extended to the current breeding programs where we'll be extrapolating that information to predict the best combinations here and the other scheme that I would like to highlight here is the 1000F1 trial. This 1000F1 trial is a very very ambitious project which is already started in 2019 and there are ten locations basically you don't we don't cover 1000F1 in all of the sites but we divide these 1000F1s into 50 percent coming from the MRYT trials that the HRDC members contribute to the HRDC membership. They have their slots of known hybrids with their best performing hybrids from the industry and 50 percent of the hybrids are from the Erie's hybrid program and 20 percent of this so let me put it like this 40 coming from private sector 40 coming from Erie and 20 percent coming from the best market checks including the best market checks in their locations and every 40 of these individual hybrids are basically customized for each location so that the people who are evaluating they are looking at the Erie hybrids that are customized for that region and comparing it with the best hybrids from the industry and best check hybrids in the in that region so basically there's this is called a kind of spatial testing and sparse testing and you can see the grain yield performance of all hybrids in each location is predicted the best hybrid combinations in different and across regions can be identified and each cooperator would know which hybrid combinations are doing well but at the backside of this we know at Erie we'll know that which of our combinations and which parental lines did good in in a given target region and immediately these breeding materials would be quickly employed to create the next generation of parental line breeding we'll rapidly go by the RGA rapid generation advancement and forward breeding approaches to breed superior parents and these superior parents would help in developing these superior hybrids and in this way a cycle of another set of thousand F1s would be created and this would help in achieving the genetic gains in the hybrid breeding program and this is very important from an hybrid research standpoint of you when your hybrids get into multiple environments and this will be super laid over by grain quality and disease and other layers will be layered over it and this would increase our collective genotyping and phenotyping approaches that will be helping us to map only all the major traits that are concerning this hybrid hybridized research and this would be a fantastic design but to implement and get it done in the coming years is going to be one of the biggest challenge especially in the COVID times when seed movements are highly restricted and in more time and this is one such plot at 80 of the thousand F1 trial you can see this was in 2019 and we saw this results were very good and we also not only working on the very important insect BPH which is much influenced by the climatic conditions and they come in in big waves in especially in Indonesia where BPH is one of the major problems there and this BPH 38 is a novel gene identified in the Hong Kong zone background with the gene coming from the Khazar donor and one of the reasons for this we narrowed down to this particular 260 loci which could be one of the F1 F box proteins and possessing the the loose and rich repeat domain and could be involved in the salicylic signaling pathways that gives BPH resistance and we are trying to incorporate this into our breeding materials especially restorers and maintainers to convert this tolerance into the hybrid as well also at the same time we are also working on the nutrient use efficient rates we mapped recently a paper which was published in plus one you can refer to that but to cut this story short we we could map 19 tutorials that were screened at different stages at the same time at different levels of for the nutrient used like zero NPK 80 NPK suboptimal and 100 NPK by doing so we could easily detect two major hotspots especially on chromosome two especially the the OS NPF 7.1 and the OS GF4 and this is a growth regulatory factor and the NPF is a nitride tripeptide transporter this technically helps in the use efficiency pathways and what we achieved in the hybridized program is we could successfully release and 17 hybrids out of which six were first time commercialized to the private sector on limited exclusivity for a six-year period to especially three of these hybrids to tau corporation and another two hybrids to SLR attack and we have currently members up to 88 in the HRDC membership we publish our annual report to and it's shared with the HRDC members annually and many of the platinum green and green members are free to join there is no cost for them the private membership starts at $20,000 per annum and the platinum starts at 45K and these are the models by which one can really utilize the jump awesome that is freely shared with the public sector but it is given to the public and private the private partners for for for their members for their membership and we bring this value to them these are the six hybrids that I mentioned one of them is a two line hybrid MSM STO61 I take you to another topic where which is much related to the dark seeded hybrids we are working very seriously on this topic on development of dark seeded hybrids our first low-hanging fruit was Mestizo 89 which turned out to be very very good for dark seeded conditions and this was verified by the dark seeded rice consortium which is a consortium for dark seeded and led by Dr. Brenda Atiri and this is one of the early situation where we could identify this now we are having a very full-fledged breeding program on the parental line breeding or and also developing many DSR hybrids and using the the the interrogation lines that we developed in the past many of them were also direct seeded high imprints that we developed and these are now in the restorative backgrounds and directly utilized but to understand the key traits that are required to develop the DSR hybrids the foremost is the anaerobic germination tolerance emergence from deeper soil depths shorter duration high yield potential weed suppresiveness and herbicide tolerance should be incorporated. Lodging resistance is a key trait and tolerance to abiotic stresses especially drought and nutrient use efficiency are very important provided we have this this this type of dark seeded hybrids can be also we can employ alternate wetting and drying strategy thereby reducing the greenhouse gas emissions in these plots and dark seeded rice is really the future in the coming days and we're also also in progressing BH, Tungro and Blast and BLB resistance genes into the the maintainer and restorer lines elite restorers and maintainers which will be shared with the HRDC members soon and also Erie has been in the forefront share such knowledge of marker estate breeding for hybridized technology and we have listed here several of these credit based gene gene based markers which are available for people to use for the marker estate breeding and utilization in their pipelines and also Erie introduced the forward breeding approach for hybridized with 10 markers with the inter tech panel which is also available for people to use for their breeding efforts and by this way we can do a forward breeding approach where many of the B by B and R by R crosses can be filtered quickly in the early generations for using these markers and progress in RGA single seed descent approach rapidly to F3 to F6 in 1.2 years and therefore we can create materials in two years that can be shared with the members. To cover another important area which everybody would be excited is the two line hybridized technology how this helps in the climate smart hybrid climate smart hybrids to propagate in much cheaper and much sophisticated manner but now to understand this one has to understand temperature sensitive genetic male stability system for two line hybrid development. Now this is a major gene and and it's a recessive gene located in the nucleus and it requires low temperature to become fertile or in and this can be achieved in the low temperature conditions where the plants are raised and multiplied and these seeds are brought to high temperature regions and where it can be restored by any non-TGMs which we call as pollen parent can restore the fertility of this so there is no such thing like a restore our hair or a maintainer hair. Any parent can restore the fertility in the TGMS lines and this is how the benefit is you cut away the maintenance part and the cost of seed production can be reduced by at least 40 to 50 percent and if you see the history of the two line technology was way back when I did my PhD we developed eight TGMS lines and and many of the the early findings are there in this manual that we published long back but this technology never lifted up and we understood that one of the major reasons despite the advantages that it has like I told you maintainer can be a wider choice of parents abroad and the genes are major genes so it can be easily transferred there's no negative effect of the cytoplasm that the hybrids do have if you have the WS wild abortive cytoplasm it has also higher seed production ability than the three line system so we can easily cross three tons through this approach and two line hybrid rights generally use higher than the three line hybrids by 10 percent so that makes it attractive now the key element here is to produce a hybrid parental line that will become sterile it can become completely male sterile at 24 degree centigrade or even lower than that so this is our objective here to breed this and this was not available in the past and recently over the last few years we could develop this particular line and we have created a new study group called the two line study group where a set of like-minded companies have come forward to fund this research and we have been successful in going forward in testing and validating for commercial commercialization of the two line in India and other parts of the world and if you look at the one of the two line hybrids here 554 which was tested in Hyderabad in 2018 and we can see the advantage over US 337 and MTU 1010 by 21 percent and this is another older TKMS line using the older version which is also doing good and did well in Hyderabad and we had also done in Varanasi last year in 2019 where it outweighed RIS 644 gold by almost 7 percent and this 554 did with 6.5 percent and Oversawa 127, 13 and 12 percent so this is very important to understand that the two line hybrids are important features that can lead the way based on especially reducing the cost of seeds and the process increased process 554 has a climate smart rates like drought and low input or we can call it as nutrient use efficiency is higher in these hybrids and these are being validated and tested in the different sites in India now and I'm very optimistic about these hybrids performance which is already nominated in the Philippines national field cooperative trial now to summarize the whole talk what would be the future hybridized research direction now climate smart hybrids are being evaluated now in vulnerable target regions in different parts of the world newer climate smart products involving heat cold elevated levels of CO2 are the key areas including even ozone these could be one of the few futuristic climatic conditions would warrant us to work on these ones including nutrient and water use efficiency so the hybridized program currently is dealing with these areas for our research and we are trying to look at the interactions that could be also interplace would be there between these target rates and how these could be pulled properly by a good breeding design and that's what we are looking at and designing new cms lines and tgms lines that matches the market requirements of three line and two line hybrids are very important and innovative approaches like genomic prediction of heterosis and artificial intelligence could lower our narrow down our combinations that we would like to test and cost reduction and precision at process breeding is going to be the future two line hybridized technology would become a commercial reality in tropical asia provided we have the usable low temperature or the low critical stealthy point below 24 degree centigrade if you have something like 23 or 22 i'm sure we will be able to get it right and the genomic editing tools i don't know many countries still are keeping this under the gm category but sooner or later this would be understood as one of the future techniques and it would become as a routine and it would be easy for us to target edit target rates and quickly get to the help for the farmers in addressing some of the key target rates correction and we will be in a better situation in this regard and hybridized technology is cannot be lifted without the human resources being trained and this is one of the very key aspects where we are very much in the HRDC as well as other platforms we are very much concerned for training more human resources that can understand the how to breed climate smartness in their parental lines and how to develop hybrids and how to do seed production in in their own respective regions is very important and iris also has the we would like to look at the future to create a center of excellence for hybridized research and extension that would cater these type of things in the future and this is something which is very much practical keeping the consideration of food security I think a wise investment should be in this direction to create these type of centers of excellence for such a important technology and of course social impact socioeconomic impacts should be should be tested should be pride for the climate smart hybrids in the coming years especially in Asia and Africa I think I will try to conclude here and I would like to acknowledge all my team members especially in the GSR project that was funded by the Landman and the Gates team and the entire GSR team that participated from CAS, CAS, Chinese Academy of Culture Sciences, ERI and Africa RISE and other partners from 16 countries are all duly acknowledged. We have our RISE breeding platform leader Hans who has helped us to project this whole new dimension of the hybrid breeding platform hybrid breeding cluster in a different way and also I like to acknowledge Remi's contribution to take it to the private sector in a very energetic manner and his team also comprised of Ajay, Linga, Roberto and so my team from Anna, Pauline, Tini and also the HRDC advisory committee hybridized breeding team involving Lito, Kalloy, Eric, Anna, Christian, Donna, Roy, Bea, Jonas, Lole, Makto and so on. I really appreciate their help in making this possible and our breeding cluster's approach is written in this caption here, developing superior high yielding hydrodic rice hybrids that meet market requirements adopting genomic tools and to strengthen and integrate the hybrid seed industry through the hybrid rice development consortium by providing elite hybrids and parental lines and technical know-how. With this you can visit our HRDC website for more information and it is the 60th year I think we are marching forward to go beyond rice. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you sir. We have some question in Q&A box that is the after the skin sear, the polling and then Q&A. I'm not able to open that. In bottom, in bottom. At the stop, I think stop sharing it. Okay, so yes. Okay, now it comes actually. Okay, good. Yes. Okay, so we put some of selected them but it comes randomly so you can answer few of them from that Q&A box section. Where should I find that? It is 34, it's so static. 34 questions, my goodness. Okay, you are interesting. It means a lot of interest, it has generated. Anyway, the hybridized varieties released in India are yet to release. What are the varieties and what rates and yield rate transfer hectare? Is it successful in India or not? I think you should understand that ICR, Indian Council of Agriculture Research, with its partners, especially IIR and IRI and NR National Rice Research Institute are members of the HRDC and we are sharing with the about 26 private members from India alone who have utilized our materials and not only our parental lines and materials. Also, we are sharing with them many of the varieties from the HRDC which they have been testing and I'm sure many of them would be in their coming to their pipeline for release and utilization. As of now, we have not any major release in India in terms of direct release but in the Philippines, we have made 17 releases. I think I will go to the next question. Can you explain how artificial intelligence predict atroantic combinations? Yeah, these type of tools are basically coming from some outsourcing done by computeromics and other agencies are there which can use artificial intelligence to predict the hybrid combinations. Basically, this uses the the genomic knowledge, the genomic sequences are known, the environments in which they are to be grown, this is known and the phenotypic traits are known for a given set and then in the places where they are grown once that of the founder lines are known, then it becomes it's just like putting more and more data into it. It starts, it's a machine learning process, including the G-BLOPS and the BLOPS would kind of machine learning process and the artificial intelligence basically bleeds on this and accumulates more and more information as it becomes more intelligent by itself and it will say, okay, use these combinations. These are the best ones for you. I think this is the way it does the artificial intelligence, but it needs a lot of information in the first place coming from different trials and this gets fed into it repeatedly by very good algorithms of machine learning and that's how the artificial intelligence grows. It becomes, it grows with time actually. And then we have a grain number per panicles in hybridized varieties. Is it for 300, 400? It is not important what is the grain number. It is ultimately the grain yield. Sometimes there are compensation mechanisms. In some panicles would have more, something like 350 to 400. Some would have 250 to 300 grains per panicle, but then the number of dealers, number of productive panicles and the sterility at the bottom of these pipelines, all this matters in the total grain yield and I would suggest watch out for the final grain yield per plot. That would determine ultimately the yield. And of course, these are the yield component rates. It matters a lot, but higher with more productive dealers is very essential. The next question is from David Chen. Sorry to clarify, what are the desirable traits and characteristics of variety that makes it better for direct seeding? In case I was unclear in the previous question, I think the direct seeded conditions basically the traits that are important. You see, when people will throw direct seeded in dry bed condition or bed, bed conditions, basically in bed, bed conditions, you need anaerobic germination tolerance because the moment you throw the seeds, you will inundate with water and the water would not allow these germination of these seeds, but it will control the weeds. So for control of the weeds, you need to keep the water film over the surface of the soil that you can control the weeds. And therefore, anaerobic germination tolerance is very vital. Then the under deeper depths of soil, especially in dry bed, showing sometimes the seed falls toward lower depths. And that ability to grow from that, from two centimeters below that, it should be possible for these, this should be a trait as such. And likewise, the herbicide tolerant resistance. And I think many of these traits are very important, early bigger. And if you had seen that figure on that, I had illustrated most of these traits there. I think you can look at that. And herbicide resistance tolerance, like what we are working with the BSF, Clearfield and Provisional Technologies are there. Also herbicide genes can be incorporated, that will take care of the herbicides that we can apply on these plants to make it really effective. Another one from anonymous attendee, Burden are on farmer or seed every season as hybrids segregate. I think one has to understand hybrids have to be used only one season for its exploitation, F1. Once a farmer buys the seed, they have to use one season and not to grow the second F2. And the farmer benefits from the higher yields of more than 1.5 to two tons in conditions, especially in favorable rain-fed conditions. The advantage is sometimes even more than 50% and in irrigated conditions, it touches 30%. So the extra yield that he gets, it is possible for a farmer to invest on it. And we have seen this in time again in the rain-fed areas in India, the hybrids are prolifying in these regions where the farmers are really poor, but now their income has increased because of the hybrid technology where the farmers are gaining on the advantage of the hybrids over the inbreads. And in fact, it is not a burden when you see the profitability in the front. So that is something people always feel that that is the way, but I would suggest people to look at the advantage and the seed rate is only 16 kg per hectare and we are trying to go below that even. So that is not when you compare with inbreads which is 35 kg per hectare, sometimes 150 kg in direct seeded conditions, people are growing and when you compare this with 16 kg, it should not be difficult. Next question I see is from Afsana Ansari, what is the highest seed yield of hybridized in the world, both in CMS yield and F1? I think the best yields can touch up to six tons in the best yields, I'm telling you, it can touch even six tons in cases where China has reported. But to be realistic, on an average, you can touch 3.5 tons in China, they can do it. In India, the average seed yields are touching 2.5 tons comfortably and we are viewing whether we can cross the three tons in the tropical regions. So this is very much influenced by the temperature and the climatic conditions where you produce the seed. So one has to understand that CMS yields are largely dependent on the type of CMS lines that you use. So out-crossing crates facilitate the higher seed yields and CMS yields also becomes much higher than the A by R seeds to the same level and even in fact more because of the synchronous flowering and it is more than 3.5 tons, we can expect in case of A by B in Indian conditions. And how can we get these hybridized varieties in Pakistan? We have a partner in Pakistan, the Rice Research Institute in Kailash Kaku is getting, it is a member of the HRDC and the private sector who are interested in Pakistan, they can become members of the HRDC as well and they can at $20,000 per year but they can really make money when the time comes for licensing. You have to pay a very low up front, low licensing fees, which is just like 2.5% of the given hybrid and 1.5% for restorer and this is very, very low low level of licensing fees because ERI wants to use these funds not for increasing our coffers but we want to increase the investment into hybridized research and this money goes back to the public's utility where we bring and plow back this money and bring more rich dividends to the hybridized research and this is how this whole pattern works. And therefore the public sector receives the seeds free, the private sector receives for token money or licensing this at a later stage. So I would encourage all private sector, whether it's from Pakistan, India or any other country who are interested for similar questions, they should contact HRDC Secretariat, we have a HRDC website. I would encourage people to become members and take the benefit to their country and to their region and I told you public sector are free to become members. Next question coming from Anuj Kumar, sir what is the future of hybridized in India and now majority of the area is under pure line varieties. I think Anuj you are not aware that currently the area under hybridized is 3.5 million hectares and this area is likely to grow very rapidly in the coming days when the food prices is going to hit people will switch the button to hybridize because that is the only viable approach any planner would look at it. You don't have any other alternative approach at this moment that can give 25 to 30 percent increased productivity and I really think people should align themselves with this concept in their mind. What is the next question Miraj, what is the difference between hybridized varieties and improved varieties? The major difference is the hybrids have early vigor and they can be combined with any type of tolerances by complimenting the traits in two parents and you bring it into the hybrid. The grain quality can be customized based on the grain quality parameters of the two parents. So you can really address the hybrid varieties as we want. So what is in the parents is what is the hybrid is all about. So you want to have good quality hybrids, you can have good quality, you can have basmati hybrids for that matter but the bigger difference in improved varieties is 25 to 30 percent yield advantage is the biggest factor that helps the hybrid varieties adoption. And then Supraja is requesting the best method for development of hybrids. I think I showed you all the methods but Iri is now engaging on the one line, one rice breeding approach based on the genomic selection and we are also employing the genomic selection in the heterotic pools and for the parental line breeding and this is one rice breeding is very very essential and will become the future way of breeding both for inbreds and hybrids and many countries and including the city centers are already adapting to this one rice breeding. So this is a new area which will be soon you will be listening to it two more. Okay so next question is Acharya wants to know, restorer line or maintainer line are from wild variety or cultivated type? The gene that came from the the the sterility gene that is located in the mitochondria comes from wild abortive cytoplasm which is coming from orizoceti was spontaneous which was the first source of WA cytoplasm which was discovered in China and it later it was shared to Iri and from Iri to all the Asian countries this lines were developed and into the CMS backgrounds and they were freely shared with the the region. So the the restorer genes are available in indica backgrounds plenty of it but in japonica you don't have restorers and that is the reason why two line approach is very good approach to create inter specific hybrids between indica and japonica. Now coming to Raj Kumar how non-allelic cutial permitting have advantage over allelic cutial permitting under what circumstances we can sort non-allelic cutial permitting? I think this is the advantages are relative between non-allelic and allelic permitting but the the the key factor lies on what type of traits that we are moving and how we are preparing the alignment and the benefits of that. So generally when you are using different donors and common recipient parents and these non-allelic segments for a given target trait gives contributes to the drought tolerance or salinity tolerance and whether it's allelic or non-allelic but generally non-allelic segments help in permitting or pulling the best part of the cutials together and as well as I think you have to look at our paper that was published on the GSR breeding approach in the theoretical applied genetics journal recently in 2020. So I went out. Is that the question remaining? Sir there is a there are so many questions. Okay. I thought that was the end of the page actually. No there is so many if when you feel it's okay we can stop it. Yeah you let me know but based on the on the top priority on the top I'm just telling them but if it's similar question I will if I add answer but they're all different questions that's very interesting for me too. The wild rice ruffipogon cross can be a valuable pre-breeding material of course any wild resources can be very useful. XA genes like XA23 came from ruffipogon sometimes the yield genes have been cloned and from ruffipogon I think these are approaches where you can you can utilize these type of materials. Then David Chen puts a question rightfully pointed out there are certain materials such as fertilizers which originates from unrenewable resources assuming climate smart would be the ones that is most efficiently utilizing is there a quantitative measure of nitrogen efficiency between common varieties and climate smart varieties. I think this is a very important question. I think we published a recent paper in class one how this could be evaluated and really the phosphorus is one of the biggest challenges because this is going to be completely you'll not have a renewable source for this and as we go along spreading towards 2050 the challenge would become more serious as we go along which and these countries are located in Morocco, Russia and all these countries whether they will trade these type of fertilizers even would be a question mark how long they will keep mining these rock phosphates and so these are really big questions and of course use efficiency we actually use the partial factor productivity and the agronomic use efficiency for mapping the QTS for that but there are certain the best approach would be the physiological use physiological use efficiency which is very very physiological efficiency is one of the most important approaches to measure the differences between nitrogen use efficiency and definitely the hybrids would stand out because of their heterotic combinations there. There will be much in higher use efficiency if we incorporate the genes rightly recently released hybrids and varieties in India I think ACRIP has regular trials and many of the companies put their hybrids there I think one should refer to that. Sorry if I just skipped anything by mistake okay Deepan Roy and Roy global rice research R.A. HRDC doing the same thing for is it a question yeah our global rice research R.A. and HRDC doing yeah kind of because what eventually these type of arrays or these type of multi-location trials would be similar in some approach but what we are trying to do in the new one rice reading approach will will be combining many of these things into one single way of testing these materials and it would be very robust in its testing approach and I'm we are expecting very soon this will be laid out and Hans is leading on this approach and we will be seeing this happening soon. Sudhakar asked nice presentation can these lines be accommodated to of course these lines many of these hybrids as well as the inbreds that we developed are adapted to aerobic conditions and we have shared many of these lines with many countries in the past how can we introduce two line hybrid in our country I think at this moment two line hybrids we are sharing with the two line study team where we are trying to completely validate the commercialization of two line hybrids from private point private sector point of view and immediately these type of materials would be brought to different countries for testing and the best way is to look out for this study group that has been formed recently in 2019 and this is a very very robust set of companies and public sector institutions have joined hands to see how this can be commercialized I think once that is done many of these things would eventually reach different countries do on-rise have anything to do with climate proofing on-rise to my understanding it's a joke rather than a thing that it is bird proof I believe more than that the sometimes this on skips these birds away sometimes that is the only thing but generally on-trades are not preferred in many parts of the world but there are places where people like on also because I told you it gives bird birds not damaged because it gets it protects from the birds so anyway that is it also gets stuck up in their throat or something like that so this is on-rise but I doubt whether it has any climate proofing when we administrator when we evaluate hybrids for eels or other characters can we use for other commercial hybrid or check or standard varieties or when we evaluate hybrids for eels okay so we always use the hybrid checks and the best commercial market checks so whenever the eels are comparable bringing some new trades into them or is robust in some manner the people can easily evaluate it and then based on the grain quality and the acceptance of the farmers definitely one should be able to commercialize them the next question is the anonymous attendee what can we use hybrid rise in organic farming because it need more quantity of nutrients or so how to fulfill requirement of nutrients in organic farming so of course hybridized can be used in any type of farming farming approaches can vary doesn't matter and such a hybrid especially use efficient hybrids should be a very perfect fit for this type of thing but I would not encourage organic farming in the sense to keep food security when food security is becoming a challenge even if you put all the nutrients they are not going to give you the best returns and if you are going to use organic farming with organic fertilization and to replace the chemical fertilizers I think that is going to be a challenge but hybrids are always good in utilizing any kind of nutrients compared with inbreds so it should not be a problem in adopting hybridized for organic farming so you are welcome to use if it is your viewpoint okay so many questions okay so Arun asks sir whether photosynthetic photosensitive rice varieties can be converted to photoinsensitive or any possible way to make it flowering yeah of course this is through mutation breeding of course you can mutation or gene editing can be done but GM is not in many plots of the world still so you knock down this gene you can make it insensitive and all those things can be done I think it's possible and through breeding also it is possible to replace the gene we think we got we received so many questions there is a hundred questions we minimized half of them and it's it's increasing it's increasing like pop-up and increasing so I think they are very much interested and they understand because there there are so many comments in the youtube that your every slide is very nice and very understandable so that is the reason that there is the question number of questions so I'm happy to answer but I think time doesn't permit for everyone to sit tightly I think yes so we we wouldn't want to move in our next session that is the interview because so many young young fellow are waiting for that section they are very appreciated how how your career is well so I'm giving the space to Soma Soma will contact that interview hello we are now moving ahead to the interview section of today's webinar today is our tenth webinar of the series we are honored to have with us Dr. Jahar Ali from the International Rice Research Institute Philippines Sir you're a pioneer in your field of research we would love to know how you started your career please tell us about your journey so far as a plant scientist yeah my journey actually was really very interesting right in the beginning if I remember as a child actually as a child of school going kid I had a deep interest in we are located near to the IIRI Indian Agriculture Research Institute so very often I would go through those fields and earlier on I got this liking for agriculture and I took a chance I took after matriculation I joined my BS agriculture in Punjab University there was a program to join after 10th I said why should I waste my 10th and 11th and 12th degree and then join and I could save a year from that so I joined after matriculation and I saved one year of my time actually it was a five-year program then after joining there I remember I had been very great hugely influenced by stalwarts rice stalwarts like Ms. Swaminathan, Dr. Kuzhev Kush, Dr. Siddique they were actually my in many ways they were like mentors for me everything and I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Kush in the front rows I was sitting as a undergraduate student of BS agriculture in the front rows of the auditorium listening to Dr. Kush when he was presenting the IR 36 rice variety was being showcased so at Punjab University I was in the front rows listening to him very that really moved my me towards more towards crop breeding and genetics and I took MS in genetics later at Indian Agriculture Research Institute where I had the opportunity at that time I remember 1988 I introduced the entrance exam at that time many people maybe may not be aware when I introduced entrance exam and to my good luck or bad luck I don't know I was introduced I was interviewed by more than 400 people were interviewed for MS position for seven plots of MS degree in genetics and I was lucky to get through I was a fourth ranker at that time but anyway so it was really exciting for me to get into IRA or and it's a very premier institute in this region in especially in India and and then I had the opportunity to work on chemical gamutasides that are chemical gamutasides or we call it as chemical hybridizing agents for my masters that was time when no CMS lines were available in India unlike because this was a technology coming from China then it came to some of these materials and the was breeding these materials and these airy bred CMS lines didn't enter India at that time in 88 and we worked on chemical hybridizing agents as an alternative approach to selectively sterilize the males and leaving the females for time and that way can we produce chemically hybridized hybrids so that was my MS thesis all about and we discovered a group of chemicals called oxanilates and that sparked a lot of interest at that time and then I did my PhD also on two line hybrids at that time Mariyama in 1990 was one of the lead scientists who discovered the TGMS in Japonica background in Northern PL 12 and at the same time in India the scientists were looking how to get it done for Indian context and at that time this team went to Japan to Mariyama's lab and the materials were not to be shared with India at that time because of the huge costs they were demanding a very huge money for that so then the thesis problem came in IRI and they said can we do repeat a mutation breeding for that I said how can you search a needle in the haystack for hitting correctly that particular gene but then we took our chances and I did a mutation breeding with chemical and physical mutations and I was lucky to get eight TGMS lines we developed and that was a very path breaking effort and it was our India's first approach where we could develop our own TGMS line in indica background for the first time and this triggered the two line hybridized research in India and for which I was awarded the Jawar Lal Nehru award for outstanding PhD thesis and then I joined Dr. S. K. Rainer for my who was also one of very great scientists on double haploid at that time and he's still there in some private sector and the the double haploid breeding approach was a very good approach by which you can quickly fix the any kind of material segregating and reach the farmers much faster but this learning from him helped me to speed up much of the breeding activities in the later part when I was trying to fix material okay coming to then I came to I was selected for the two line hybridized postdoc at Erie under Dr. Virmani and Virmani is one of the stalwarts for hybridized who was the first to Erie scientist who brought this technology to Asia and shared much of the materials initially from Erie's jump blossom to the members in different parts of the world and Erie could promote hybridized technology outside China in Asia specifically and much of the work credit goes to Dr. Virmani with whom I had a good association with him for a in that time when I was working for two line and then I moved on from there to serve the Tamil Nadu Agriculture University at Agriculture College and Research Institute at Trichy where I was trying to do salt tolerant hybrids which were never in we never thought of developing stress tolerant hybrids at that early imagine sometime in 95 we had a ICR project grant from ad hoc project and also natp project also we got and on two line hybridized project as well so these projects helped me to develop the first salt tolerant hybrid especially sodic city tolerant hybrid core H2 from Tamil Nadu Agriculture University which did very well in the sodic conditions where the pH is more than 9 and this hybrid did very well more than 1.5 tons so the best check hybrid at that time and then this journey from there I came to I was after serving five years there I came back to Erie again for a second round of postdoc under the Rockefeller Foundation granted project where I could work with a very lead scientist genome specialist at that time was Dr. Sikong Lee and he's also was the GSR project leader as from Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences and he was one of the very lead scientists with whom I had the opportunity to work with him as a postdoc in 2000 to 2003 as a project scientist at Erie and that is where I learned I was the first generation of the molecular breeders from the Rockefeller Foundation which invested on molecular breeders at that time at that time the technology was mostly on the SSR markers moving away from the RAPD markers and all those markers and came to SSR SSR was considered as the best marker at that moment and everybody working like day and night I remember still many people working like shifts night shift and day shift in the marker lab in Erie and this was a very exciting site more than 15 postdocs in that lab called genome mapping lab GML it was popularly called and Erie then I after this project scientist I moved to a place where I was under Erie Iran project I moved to Iran for six years to lead their molecular breeding and hybrid program there and I developed and helped in the development and deployment of Bahar one which is one of the very high yielding hybrids using the Erie germplasm and later also we developed about six hybrids of very high yielding hybrids for this country and then I came to Erie as the GSR project scientist leading the GSR project at Erie in 2009 and this was at a time when this whole thing was funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Erie was a sub-grantee of Chinese Academy of Culture Sciences and we were interested to develop and breed materials in the tropical context whereas China is in temperate conditions and it was a big challenge to adapt the materials coming from there so we had to do a whole flageot a full flageot breeding at Erie to acclimatize and completely tropicalize the materials and that's how the GSR breeding strategy evolved and it helped us to map many of the traits related to many abiotic stresses and that's this 10-year period from 2009 to 2019 was the most glorious period for me in my career where I could but my dream was fulfilled when I joined Erie to be honest with you all that it was like joining Erie was something like something like a dream come true for a kid when I was just thinking of just going to Punjab Irkha University and then from my area and then coming to Erie and then becoming a scientist at Erie was really a very pleasant moment for me and really I feel that the opportunity that Erie gave me to unleash my potential is very much acknowledged and I feel for all youngsters that they should always aspire to come to Erie and get connected with us this is a very good opportunity for everyone so I could release about 28 varieties directly bred by me in less than seven to eight years and reaching 2.7 million hectares and almost 2.2 million farmers touched 110 of these materials are in the pipeline in different countries to be released so how productive you can be beyond this I don't realize and now with the hybrids that we are developing we have hundreds of hybrids in the pipeline that will hit the commercialization wing very soon and this is what is the potential of these materials will be unleashed as we go along so this is where my journey of leading the hybridized program at Erie where we revitalized the hybridized development consortium and today we have 88 members from public and private sector and this is a very good platform where the public and private centers come together and learn a lot of the things where we share our materials with this set this platform and we get nominal fees from them and a nominal licensing fees that goes back into research again of Erie's mandate to serve the poor farmers in the world to produce the costs and all those things I think I don't want to extend more than this I think this is where the journey ends and it's still very bright for me to move along and some other time I will tell you the best part of the story as we go along thank you sir how important a role will hybridized play in feeding the billions in the future you see the hybridized is such a wonderful technology it's you have to understand the core of the issue here what is your parents is what is your F1 if you design your parents according to the requirements of the market segments and definitely the hybrids will perform the same way and if you have very good system of market segmentation and understanding market requirements and reading the right parental lines for different definitely the hybrids can give 25 to 30 percent yield or 25 to 30 percent yield means 25 to 30 percent resources you are saving like suppose you have 100 hectares of land of inverts and I want to put in terms of production if I just have to use hybrids I will get it done in 70 hectares the same yield so 30 hectares is saved in a just to understand in a layman's language that 30 hectares of inputs is saved 30 percent of the labor is saved 30 percent of the inputs that is very costly these days are being saved so hybrid technology does so much in that front then you have the second layer of the it gives employment generation to the industry it also helps the farmers to come out of this the the so-called one ton means the marginal advantages that they get from in bread technologies of course in bread technology is important but it has to be priced in places where the the manifestation of the heterosis is maximized where you get 25 to 30 percent definitely one should exploit so when you translate this into a larger area now eight million hectares outside China is hybridized if we can touch 15 million hectares in the next 10 years I'm sure that we can meet the challenge of 2050 to feed globally especially who are depending on rice as their staple right I think I will stop here sir along with food security what are your thoughts on nutritional security of rice yeah this is a very important topic I think it's a very important thing that the second dimension of food security has to go along with the nutritional security and I also mentioned in my first slide even I mentioned that to for the viewers that this nutritional security is so vital that it's the the it is not just food security is just not just solving the hunger but the hidden hunger is solved by the nutritional security there are a lot of hidden hunger in terms of zinc requirements dietary requirements of iron zinc and many other elements that is missing in many of our diets and by putting these things in right perspective and making a mainstreaming of breeding methodologies by which we incorporate zinc and iron into our all breeding pipelines this can be resolved and very easily it can be done it's just some few major genes that is required to be brought into the breeding pipelines where we can use them even in the forward breeding approach one or two markers for that to select automatically those materials and we can forward it and very easily if it can be done and anybody can do it it's not some lead institution doing it any breeder with that mindset should be able to involve the zinc and iron to be incorporated in their breeding programs but one thing one caution here is one has to be very careful when you are using this type of heavy metals like zinc specifically they have a lot of interaction with other heavy metals as well so in places where arsenic and cadmium they have huge interactions and interplace between these type of heavy metals so one should not put them their uptake mechanisms are similar so one has to be very careful in breeding zinc rich materials but not to be deployed in places where arsenic is a problem so we have to be deployment has to be very careful so therefore the market segment analysis is very important before deployment strategies now so this is the future very important for nutritional security okay sir what new tools and techniques will be important for rise breeding in the future I think this is a very important we are evolving actually from simple marker state breeding in the past and simple breeding marker state was considered as a big tool at that time and then we came on to the the whole genome sequences were done and now when all the molecular markers and high density maps are available we know more information on the genotype of the materials that we are breeding we can play with these the whole genome sequences to our advantage where we can easily pull them pyramid them and do many things including the genomic selection nowadays is the buzzword I think genomic selection by using elite by elite founder lines certainly should help in advancing the genetic gains much rapidly but the for the youngsters I see that these the new tools are mostly related to computers and related to gene sequencing should not tie them up with the computers and servers and running after the data but without looking at the plants in the field my breeding always came from the field evaluation and selection and then fully enforced with the genomic knowledge of the materials and their how they move in the structure and then analyzed them and using the design QTL permitting so the GSR breeding technology the design QTL permitting approaches and the rapid generation cycles to maximize your genetic gains we call nowadays speed breeding and a lot of good publications are there where you can do six seasons in a year in barley and other crops for rice till it is three and a half crops you can take in a year but that's a challenge but this can really rapidly you can advance your generations and genetic gains can be maximized and above that if you use some of the best breeding strategies like genomic selection GSR breeding strategies design QTL permitting I think these can do wonders for any breeding program and this can be extended to not only rice any crop don't get restricted this is this is open to any crop and these are most of the crops are being used by our sister city centers as well. Okay sir now we'll conclude with one last question what would your words of advice be to the young research fellows out there? I think the words of advice I am not in a position to give advice to anyone but some of the youngsters I think what I would suggest them is there is no replacement to hard work no matter you do anything you have to put all your dedication your efforts and these are proven pathways already it's not that we are going for the first time learning something you have to use the proven pathways of people who have experienced and I'm telling you that it was not a easy journey for me to reach here and if you have to do it was share hard work hard work hard work and and true dedication to see that your materials reach the farmers so there should be some kind of a driving force or passion to drive you exactly so sometimes this passion drives you to be dedicated and you always remember that look at that poor farmer there in somewhere your materials will be utilized can that bring spines to his faces that is what drives me personally and that motivates me every day okay somebody is using my material and trying to benefit by even half a ton in the best conditions it's good that that gives a lot of rewarding self-rewarding yourself that somebody's benefited out of it and then the apart from this the some of the students they have to understand that it's not they have to put very dedicated efforts to get to the bottom of it basically like you should be passionate you should have inquisitive mindset you should try to go to the bottom of everything not just look at the top and just do something and superficially touch it but get to the bottom of it and this is very important for youngsters especially when the jet set age of modern computers and gadgets and media and all those things so they get often diverted so they should go deeper deeper dive is very essential for science and unless you get satisfied personally i don't think no better rewarding than yourself satisfaction and what you're doing at the end of the day i think i i like to just put these as a prick to the budding scientists so that they start get started right away thank you okay thank you so much sir we will now go back to chauvel thank you sir i i just wanted to show you our today's our responses because it's very hard to calculate the viewers it's easy to calculate that we got within four seconds 500 attendees in the zoom box and i noted about 955 in youtube but it is varied so the best way how i we understand that what is the today's attendees i want to share the screen to you and this is ongoing we got 1928 responses and from these countries we got 1674 responses from India from Nepal Philippines Pakistan Bangladesh Indonesia Malaysia Nigeria China Morocco Tunisia Algeria Australia combat or a combatia egypt iraq shawty shawty arabia singapore silanka thailand vietnam barkin but benin butan ghana ireland kenya maxiko woman peru shardan zimbabwe and many more so i think it is the reward and it is the satisfaction to you and for us also that so many so many people are viewing uh viewing today's talk and so many questions i i i don't know there is a lot of questions so many private sectors company from pakistan they are they are going to approach with you about your work and i think this this work or this webinar is fruitful fruitful to me i am expecting such such responses and i'm very thankful to you i think what should congratulate you and your team actually for this wonderful i'm very delighted to that that so many people listen to my talk and certainly it's a very humble request that i will try to answer many of these questions at a later date if i get their email ides or something i can respond to them as well at least the some of these questions if you can post me back at any we can put a stop for sorting out these questions and we can send back as feedback to you which you can post back into your youtube or somewhere so that i don't want my questions get lost somewhere in this huge responses that came suddenly we'll try to respond to every question and put it in youtube section which i will share with you later on i promise that yeah and yeah and i also thank all the viewers for patiently bearing with me sometimes i get excited and i think i didn't across the time but i hope you enjoyed my presentation thank you thank you sir and we have the all the we have the feedback form and all the email address of the actual attendees so we can forward your answer to them any any point of time in the future and we we are going to share without their email at disclosing their email at this and phone number we are going to share their institute their profession and their name in our website and we allowed their certificate number so i also share you the link to tonight you can see the actual professions wise everything so it's so wonderful being with you i i really i don't expect that you you agree to deliver a talk but it motivates me a lot even your presence give me so many positive positivity for your talks that i can move forward we can all together it is for the benefit of plant science and we are all our plant loving people so it is thankful and thanks from my team and from my yeah from my side and iriside i think i'd like to thank the team bioengine and the panelists out here they are doing a wonderful job and i'm sure this this platform will grow to strength and with time and keep doing this effort and certainly there will be more instances that more learned people will come and talk in your platform and it would encourage science to progress this is exactly what iris all about iri wants to share knowledge with its partners and people who look towards iri they are welcome to iri and look at our website and look at our thing and get connected with us thank you very much thank you we have some few minutes we wanted to share with our viewers you you can sir you leave the meeting you can leave the meeting thank you thank you bye bye now i hand it over to shoma if some instruction regarding the certificates because today we got so many new viewers also so it's maybe they are answers to how to get the certificate and what what is the next today we got so many suggestions of future topic i'm assuring all of you we try we try our best but we need the speaker also those are the expert on that topic i jaw down and now with the help of our two volunteers so we we try to communicate the respected expert on that field if it is possible definitely in the near future it will be available and we we are happy to host those topic and those speaker in this platform we already set and start registration for the webinar in august there are four webinar because we we try to lower down the number of webinars because in july we we are arranged 11 webinars so in future we try to four two to four webinars in a month which gives us the time to giving the certificate to inquiries to arrange and we also have our own work we are all a researcher an active researcher so we need some time to our own work also so hope you guys are understand that so many webinars is not possible but we planned in such a way that many talks can possible and many of you are learn and i also very interested in making this talk also in that's on the future talks so ma will help to understand our future talks and and available options which we gave under the bioengine to show now share my screen now is it visible the visible so you can see that there is the password for today's um feedback form which is well you need it for the certificates regarding the certificates you can apply for the certificate for a certificate for attendance for today's webinar we give out certificates of attendance and if you have attended the webinar you can apply for the certificate all you need to do is you need to click on the feedback link which is you can see it in the chat box in zoom and youtube if you don't find the feedback link you can also go to our website there is the the feedback link is also present there you will need the password which is this is the password on the screen and also it is there on in the chat box let's get the password because there is a place when you need to type the password in the feedback form you fill out the feedback from form and then you save a copy for of the google response sheet because you may need it later you after filling out the form you will find that you can save a response sheet okay another thing I want to say is that if you only have two hours time for this filling out of the form the the link will be active till 2 10 indian standard time so within two hours it will close also regarding the certificates we are not sending the certificates individually by email so what we are doing is we we take two days for this to to make this happen we are receiving all the applications from you through the feedback form after we receive all the applications we will make a list with a file number so you get this list from our website go to our website homepage scroll down and you will find the all the previous webinars have been listed there with the name of the topic you click on the topic name it is a hyperlink you click on the topic name and you will see that's an excel sheet opens up you'll find all the attendees the list of all the attendees who attended today's webinar you can find that there's a name and there's a file number so you click you find out your name it is all arranged alphabetically you find out your name and you will be allotted a file number then you go back to the home page and then you see that then where it is written that title of the webinar there a certificate is written in hyperlink you click on the certificate hyperlink and you will go straight into the google drive folder we have shared the certificate folder the google drive folder you get in the folder and give it some time to load because it is a big folder so it will take some time to load and you also need a good internet speed then you can see that all the pdfs are pdfs are there with the file numbers so you have your file number and you then you download your pdf certificate that's very easy and also you don't have to wait for anybody you just have to wait for two days after every webinar so that we can do this we can make the certificates and make the sheet and put it in the drive and share the link okay so we need two days for this because many of people are many people are asking right after the webinar or today evening they're asking where is my certificate so we need two days please give us two days time for this go to our website after two days and you will find that the title name and the certificate link is there click on the title name get your pdf file number click on the certificate download your certificate okay next this is our next webinar it is on 24th July the speaker is Dr. Ravi Raj Banakar he recently joined Avastajan and he came back to India from University of Minnesota USA recently and joined Avastajan he will be talking on the topic CRISPR-Cas Precision Genome Engineering the registrations have been open for a long time now and are still open please register for this you can visit our website all the everything every webinar details are there of all the upcoming webinars you will find the detail about this webinar also there you can click on the registration link and register for this webinar okay and these are the webinars in the month of August in the for the month of August we are we have arranged four webinars one is the first one is on 6th August and 11th August and 17th August and on 24th August you can find all the details on our website and the registration links are also open you can go in and register okay while you're registering while you are filling out any type of form registration form or form of certificate application you are inputting some data like your name your email address I just want to request some of you that some of you mistype your email address so please see that you have typed in your email address correctly because if you type it incorrectly then you will not receive any mail from our end because of the wrong email address okay so please check that your email address is correct I mean I have to check like for today's registration there were almost 5000 over 5000 registrations I had to go through each and every one of them to fund one another thing I wanted to say is that please don't share your email address with anyone while registering one name one email address okay if one person if there are two people with the same email address we I don't know how we will sort it out I mean it will be it it is not good because it's not fair either because one person can apply for so many uncountable number of people so no that is not happening here one person will have one email address only one email address okay I don't share with anyone for the purpose of registration you make your own email address okay regarding the name on the certificate write in your name correctly first of all type it correctly because I have been receiving mistakes on your name and then you're requesting by mail that please I have made a mistake in typing my name or I have forgotten to write my middle name please write in my name correctly so for so many people correcting their names will be very difficult for us please please write it correctly also don't put in your designation in your certificate application form just write in your name okay that's it from me that's all I had to say see you again on 24th July for the next webinar thank you okay stop the screen sharing thank you so much okay now we are we are going at the end of today's webinar I'm personally request to all of you because all the email I received and actually I give them the feedback and I'm feel very unhappy when I'm not giving the answer because I like to give the answer of your email but but it is very hectic to unnecessary email and emailing me because our rules is rules and we can't change the rules because it is a new platform and rules make us the better so asking for the password asking for the feedback link after the end of this webinar is not going to be answered your internet problem your locality your personal reason is not going to be entertained and we are not giving you such opportunity and we are not giving you the feedback link and password letter that 220 or just ending the webinar session you have to come in the live webinar listen learn because it's all free but we also organized it because we can't give password email address before or after the webinar so I'm requesting all of you don't mail us on such issues or we are not going to answer your mail second is when I upload the certificate I mean I carefully check all the certificates are there or not because when I upload it automatically Google Drive folder shows me that this number of certificate has been uploaded so there is no ambiguity there is no confusion that whether certificate is out there or not if it is not in there check it check check check we in with a high internet speed so I think all the certificates are there I'm after assuring I shared the drive so there is no chance that your certificate is not there it will be happened that your your name is not on the list because you have not submitted your feedback because it's the auto-generated list it is auto-generated list and it's automatically sorted out by the google forms so if you able to submit your feedback whatever the reason if you not able to submit your feedback whatever the reason you will not get the certificate so if you submitted your feedback form you will get the certificate but we need to scrutiny your form because we wanted to your name not your designation not your institute and not your profession current profession because these are the different form so many people are put their name with their designation we in the certificate application form because in every certificate I issued my name is mentioned there and it's my responsibility to check all the certificate before I'm going to issue them so I need this scrutiny time we need two days after two days you come and collect your certificate from our website if you're not getting your certificate but your name is on the list check multiple time with high speed internet using the computer using the google chrome logging into the google drive or google account it has to be there don't email us on that basis if your name not in the list this is the reason that you not giving the feedback form and we can't include your name after two to two ten p.m. of today's webinar so best of luck do your do your feedback and please come at early to listen the talk some guys have come into the end I got just a request feedback link please what the meaning of that the webinar is is ended it's and now somebody asked me for what is the link please don't ask such type of reason don't ask that don't don't what I say don't it's not a good approach to listen that type of webinar our all webinar I think we keep enough time to listen and learn not that 20 minutes for 25 minutes where the webinar is for a good time good explanation you got so it's a good learning process I also learn from this webinar a lot so this is the end of today's webinar as I got the request I just put the last time today's password and the link but please come at 11 we start at the start time come at 11 listen for something from our webinar series see you guys in 24 there is a talk on crisper thank you and all the related information you guys are able to find it from our website as our website is not built yet but you can go for bioengine.com there is a mention a link there is our alternative google slides right so I suggest if you have any question any query mail us but it's a very easy process to listen by in the webinar and apply the feedback form thank you thank you everyone I'm going to stop this webinar and this video will be available very soon due to back-to-back webinar I'm unable to put all the videos but I think within two days I'll able to put all the videos in that our youtube channel please subscribe our youtube channel it will help us to communicate you in a better way thank you