 Hello, my name is Achim Dobermann, I'm the Deputy Director General for research of the International Rice Research Institute or IRI. And the gentleman beside me here is Lee Weil, he's the head of our experimental station. And what we want to do with you in the next few months is actually learn how to grow a crop of rice. Not just any crop of rice, we want to do it in the best possible manner we can think of. Now we are scientists, so we do a lot of research. We believe that we know a lot about rice and how to grow it in different parts of the world. And we have lots of recommendations for farmers and extension workers. We often call them best management practices. You can find them on the internet, on our rice knowledge bank and extension materials and books and scientific papers. But what we really, really want to do is try to practice what we preach. Because often we as scientists may come up with things that, you know, don't really work in practice or sometimes you wonder why aren't people using them. So that's why Lee and I have decided, well why don't we do it ourselves. As much as we can do ourselves, because some of the things we may not be really qualified to do, but we'll try. We will. We will be qualified. This is day one of the great challenge. So on our first job today is to level the field. Now Lee, why is levelling the field so important and how do we do this? For wet seeded rice you're dealing with a seedling that is two days old, young and very fragile. And there's the two most important criteria you've got to meet early are water control and weed control. And in some ways they're one and the same. So by levelling you can ensure that each seedling has a consistent amount of water or a consistent lack of water depending on what you're trying to achieve at the time. So we really think levelling the field is the very first and most important step probably to get a good crop established, particularly if it's wet seeded rice as we want to do in our agronomy challenge this year. Yes, we're targeting a high yield and for a high yield we need a good establishment density, we need a good number of plants in the field. So we need a good survival and growing of the seeds that we will put out with the drum seeder in two days time. And levelling is definitely the foundation on which a good high yield is built. When you grow rice of course as a farmer you have to choose a variety to grow. So we have chosen a variety called NSIC RC 222 or in the Philippines it's also called locally to be gone 18. But it is actually an Erie variety so it has also the Erie designation IRRI 154. Now why did we choose this? It can yield with good management easily 6, 7 maybe even more tons per hectare. And it is a relatively new variety. We play a lot of emphasis on this because more recently released varieties are better adapted to the current climate and they can therefore have better adaptation to the yield potential situation, the environment that we have nowadays. This variety was released in 2010. And just that factor using a more recent variety can often give a yield advantage of 5-10%. We began with certified seed. Now this seed has been germination tested and it tested at greater than 90%. It was soaked, put in water 36 hours ago and then drained about 16 or 17 hours ago and incubated for that length of time. It's got a short root and even on some it's got a short shoot already. So this is about ideal for using a drum seed but we'll touch on shortly. The root and shoot could be a little bit longer and it'll still be okay. So we've got a few hours to spare which might be helpful. And the seed is ready. What are we going to do Lee? I suspect the conclusion is we're not going to drum seed. This is the depth of our mud. So as such the wheels of the drum seeder sink too far into the mud and hence the metering units sit on the mud and fail to function as metering units. A few metres out ahead once you can. Just a little bit. Do you want to do it like that? See. On a scale 1 to 10 what do you think we've accomplished in terms of spreading our seed uniformly? I think when we started the field we were barely 5 but overall I think I'd give us a 7 or an 8. The uniformity is quite good. We're aiming for a plant density of 150 plants per square metre and there's plenty of seeds in the field spread uniformly to achieve just that. We can lose a few seeds and we'll still be fine. I had a lot of trouble initially. I was looking too much on the ground trying to sprinkle seed in little patches. But later I think I got the swing. Like the broad swing looking straight ahead, walking and throwing. I'm quite hopeful that I improved over time but we'll see in a week I guess what emerges. What we have here is an area that's representative of the higher areas of the field. The areas that were well drained. So this probably represents 50 to 60% of the field. The drainage was good. The access to oxygen for the developing seed has been good. It's germinated quickly and strongly. It's got a green shoot very quickly and its third leaf is already appearing. This is wet direct seeding as it should be done. These plants are happy. Now what we have here is an area that's representative of the intermediate zone shall I say. When we seeded it was too wet. It was a little bit too wet and gradually during the week it gradually dried out. But it was still wetter than we'd like it to be. And you can see the seedlings are much smaller. They've had to fight for survival for much of the week. But they are establishing and they'll be okay even though they're slow. The establishment density is lower but overall it's an acceptable result. So the seedlings were unhappy but now they're okay. What we have here is an area representative of complete failure. The areas like this maybe somewhere between 5 and 10% of the field stayed wet all week. They've only just become dry. That was too long for the rice plants. So here we have an area that's completely devoid of rice seedlings. All the rice seeds have died. So what we have is an uneven field, a non-uniform field. The drier areas have grown really well. The intermediate areas have grown okay. They'll be okay. But the wetter areas have been complete failures. So 5 to 10% of the field we're going to reseed to give it that second chance. True, being seeded almost a week later will mean it matures a little later. But rice does have a habit of catching up by the time you get to flowering and harvest. So I'm not that concerned. I think in hindsight we were seduced by technology. We looked to the laser-leveling, laser-guided larger equipment. When in hindsight I think the small equipment, the equipment invented here in the Philippines would have given us a more level field. So don't always assume the high-tech path is the most effective one. So we're reseeding small areas, just the wetter areas. The drier areas where the rice is okay, that soil is now too dry. It won't seed successfully. The rice roots won't penetrate the soil. So there's no point putting seed there anyway. We're focusing purely on those small, very wet areas with no rice in them at all. Now I'm also thinking over here, looking around here, there's an area with a rat fence over to my left. And now that can be good because if you do have a rat problem, last year there was a rat problem just here. It's good to have what we call a trap crop where you plant an area early, about two to three weeks early and then have traps with multiple capture traps, entrances like this. So the rats, they'll go in but can't get back out again. Particularly after the fallow period, the rats, there's big disturbance during the fallow period and the working of the soil. So the rats then get moved out, get moved to the edges and they aggregate. And that's the best time to manage them. That's how we have here trappy the rat. And trappy is used often when I talk to farmers and we'll show that they'll enter into the trap here and he'll force his way through. And rats, yeah trappy's big, but see how they sort of crunch down? And rats can do that as well. The only thing that limits a rat, they can dislocate their shoulder, its width of their head which indicates how big the hole is they can get in. And with a mouse, you push your finger in, a mouse can get into a hole. With a rat, it's more sort of a, probably a large thumb. So it's usually about 12 millimetres. If you've got a hole bigger than that, then the rats can get through. And so often, you know, you don't need a very big opening here, the rats will force their way through. What do we know about birds and their interactions with suited rod? Here in the Philippines and elsewhere in Asia, often it's using what you've got here, the flags to cause a bit of disturbance. They have seen not far from here where they have like a little windmill. They'll ratchet on it, making a noise and that's to keep the birds away as well. So it's looking at noise as a deterrent. We came up after many years of research with tools that farmers and extension workers can use and I'm going to use one of these tools here. What I have here is a small tablet computer. It runs the Android system. And we have on this little tablet an application or app as they are called nowadays. That we released last year for farmers in the Philippines as a first example. It's called nutrient manager rice or sometimes also nutrient manager mobile. And it's very simple to use. It's all touchscreen here. Usually if you don't have an Android smartphone like this, you can also use it through a normal phone and call a toll-free number in the Philippines. And all it does is asking you 12, 13, 14 questions about your field. So after I've done all this, voila, comes out a photo as a recommendation. One of the first issues with water management is wet seeded rice currently is really sensitive to water. If you have too much water, the seeds die. And so that's why you need really good levelling. And secondly, it's why we really need to get anaerobic germination tolerance into rice seeds so that the technology is less difficult and less risky for farmers. So this field was lucky after it was established. There were a few showers of rain which kept it going nicely. I don't think it's been irrigated yet. But I couldn't just apply fertilizer. And so the ideal thing next will be to irrigate to wash the fertilizer into the soil. One way to reduce the amount of irrigation water we apply to rice is to do what we call alternate wetting and drying. So this means we flood the field, then we let the water disappear, we let the surface dry down, and then we re-irrigate again. Anybody can do alternate wetting and drying, but the question is how do you do it safely so that you don't lose any yield because rice is so sensitive to too much drying. So over the years, Erie's done a lot of research and they've found that if we let the soil dry down below about 10 or 15 kilopascals, soil water tension at about 15 centimetres below the soil surface, the rice suffers. But 10 or 15 kilopascals probably doesn't mean anything to you and it doesn't mean anything to farmers. It's a really nice work with this really simple field water tube which just shows you where the water table is. You can pull it out I think. Yeah, pull this out if you can. Yeah, 15 centimetres from the bottom, so you should push it into the mark. You can go a little bit further, it doesn't matter. Okay, how often do you think I need to come out and check this? Well, it depends on the weather for a start. But at least once a week, right? Yeah, at least once a week. Today we're measuring the plant density in the field. The plants have started to tiller, so it's getting a little bit difficult to count, but it's still okay. I'm using a 0.1 square metre, a 1 tenth of a square metre ring manufactured from some garden hose I stole from my wife. We throw the ring at random, preferably over your shoulder that guarantees fairly random, and it's several locations so you get it representative of the field. And the results we got averaged about 13 plants per ring or 130 plants per square metre, but the lowest was one plant per ring and the highest was 32, so there's a lot of variation. But I still think we're okay. Do we need to worry about insects at this early stage? Do we need to spray? No. Why not? At this stage the insect damage can be completely compensated for by the plant. So normally the things you get at the early stage are things like leaf folder, a little bit of leaf folder and world maggot. World maggot actually is the biggest problem this time of year, but as the plant grows it just disappears because the leaves get thicker, the maggots can't actually eat the leaf. But I keep worrying I see things on the leaves like this year and some things chewed on it. This is a world maggot? That's a world maggot, yeah. There's nothing to worry about? No problem. No problem. It is. In fact this is even light. It's not even a normal infestation of world maggot. What is this here? There's some egg mass on it here. Yeah these are probably some sort of parasitite that has so it's a wasp cocoon and these are beneficial again. So it's good news. These will fly off, there's about 40 of them there. So they'll fly off then and parasitize things like leaf folder, larvae or other caterpillars. So they're again a beneficial insect. I already saw a few lady beetles when I would call them. Are they playing much of a role at this early stage? They're also very important. They're also feeding on the herbivore insects. So they eat eggs mainly, also good predators of aphids. And also the dragonfly, there's a lot of dragonfly flying around. One of the things when you think about insects and rice, you have to remember that in the water another problem generated by rice is mosquitoes. And the dragonfly larvae live in the water, they have a very big strong jaws and they prey on the mosquito larvae. So they're keeping the mosquitoes down. So really there's a whole ecosystem here functioning to keep everything in order. I mean it really has to look hard to see all these things. I see a little spider web here in which some little insects are caught in there, what are those? These are those midges that are flying around. These are decomposer midges. So they're again beneficial. And spiders are very important predators of things like plant-hoppers, mainly plant-hoppers. But when I look around I see lots of critters here, insects of all kinds, little things flying or calling. So is that one of the reasons that some farmers think they have to spray because they see all these insects? Well a lot of people don't understand what these insects are doing. So a lot of people when they see these swarms of midges, for example, that are decomposing the material, they think it's a pest and they'll spray. The same with the world maggot. One of the biggest problems with the world maggot is that it induces farmers to spray. But we never see any yield reduction. The same with leaf folder. Prop is finally starting to exert itself. It's within a week of maximum tillering. So it's growing quite strongly now and a lot of those gaps that we've had to live with for several weeks are finally starting to fill in. So we're feeling better. This week we're going to take the opportunity to talk about what I would call the biotic influences on the crop and making an assessment of it. So that's how animals, plants, funguses and viruses, how they're interacting with the crop, both beneficial and not beneficial. I have with me here Nancy Castillo who is a specialist in assessing rice crops for the biotic influences and the level of injury that's coming from it. And Nancy and I will step through the process of assessing the rice crop for insects, for weeds, for diseases, both from viruses and funguses. So here we go. So next week what we intend to do is that we will be collecting data on injuries caused by animal pests. Animal pests refer to insect pests, snails and rats. And then we will be also assessing injuries caused by diseases, viral diseases, bacterial diseases and fungal diseases. And then we will be also assessing injuries caused by weeds. This is direct seeded rice. So we have here a quadrat, what we call as a, we consider some kind of a magic weapon. So this is equivalent to one-heeled transplanted rice. So we would actually be sampling for diseases and insect injuries. We will be using 10 quadrats. We will be sampling from 10 quadrats. And then we will be also taking, we will be sampling weeds from three areas. Each area will be about one meter by one meter. So we would be assessing weeds relative to the height of the canopy. And we will be recording the type of weeds that we will find. So we have a sweep net. Yes, this is a sweep net. We use this for counting the flying insects. In this case, mainly green leaf hoppers. The green leaf hopper is the vector of tungro. For the tapping method, we have this small pan here with water. It has a little detergent. And we use it for counting and sacking insects. Like plant hoppers, white back plant hoppers, brown plant hoppers. And then other, in the surveys we do in other parts of the Philippines we also catch rice bugs. Black bugs rather. So with these magic weapons, next week when the crop reaches the stage of maximum tillering, you'll make an assessment according to our data sheet. And then again, in the reproductive stage, in the grain filling and mature stage, we'll make another assessment. That should give us a good idea how biological things have done both for and against our rice crop. It's now about 45 days after sowing. So as you can see, the crop starts elongating. So we have hit pretty much the end of the tillering. And it's now time for the crop to develop more biomass. So you can see it's got quite a few nice looking tillers here. In this place. And stem starts elongating now. So we're coming then gradually closer to what will then be the next stage, panic unitization when the... The next thing that we also did today like we said last week already, Nancy's team just went through around here and they just did an assessment of all the different kinds of crop damage that we might have had. So diseases, insects, weeds, even rats. So we'll see what they found out but they went across the field and stopped at about 30 locations and assessed what we've got there. So that'll be interesting information and a bit more objective than what we saw ourselves. Sometimes we are getting biased by thinking, okay, we've got this problem and this problem and this problem. But they've done it in a very systematic manner and we will see what they have. But when you just sort of look around the whole field here from the distance it's us looking actually quite okay. So we've got a very good dense green canopy building up. So if we can support us now with enough nutrients and good water management and we don't run into more pest problems, we should be okay. So we need a little bit more nitrogen. So just looking at it, I have the feeling that there are some places where it gets a little bit yellowish and we know that right now we need a lot of nitrogen because the panicles are formed and we want to make sure that there's no limitation of that important nutrient. So the tool that I'm using for this is this leaf colout chart which has four different shades of green and it should guide me whether I need an extra little bit of nitrogen or not. So what I'm basically doing is I'm walking through the field and I've been taking about 15, 20 readings at different places and whenever I hit the spot I'll basically take a leaf the uppermost leaf I'll put it on the chart in the middle of the leaf and I find the green shade that matches the color of the leaf best. So this one here is matching perfectly the shade number three and that basically tells us that we're getting a little bit low already. But I have to take of course many readings because there's some variability in the leaf and I've done this now so I've just finished this and I've concluded that on average my leaf colout chart reading is actually less than three so it's between 2.5 and 3 in many cases so that's why I've decided to put on an extra amount of about 25 kg of nitrogen as urea at this stage and that should probably complete our whole fertilizer application regime. Other than that at this stage of the crop there's really nothing we can do at this point I saw some weeds coming up here and there no insect damage really that I'm worried about right now so our decision to not spray any insecticide so far seems to work out and the rest now we need to wait and hope for more sunshine so that hopefully we still get some kind of decent yield. So we start with a visual estimate of how ready the crop is and we first look at the proportion of yellow grains the proportion of straw yellow grains now Martin has suggested an ideal amount for harvest would be 80% yellow now in front of me here we always have an issue as to whether it's representative or not it's probably 50 to 60% yellow something of that order it's not quite ready yet now a more objective and professional way to assess how ready the crop is will be to measure its moisture content yep and this is one way to do that this is a moisture meter so called moisture meter it measures the resistance of the crop which is basically dependent on the moisture content and you have a small sample tray so you take a sample from a panico as Lee said 80% of the grain should be straw yellow that basically says 80% of one panico getting representative is always a challenge there's almost no... so you take a small sample like this fill it in there and then what you do with this instrument basically you crush it oops can I give you this you turn the knob and crush it turn it all the way to the end and then you measure the resistance and that gets translated in the reading of the moisture content and in this case it's 21.6% now what we're going to do is mix the greener one of harvestin and because this is a very small sample it's not really representative neither for a small plot nor for the field so what you have to do is you have to in one location you should do at least three different measurements so now in this sample for example you have a lot more green grains than in the previous one so the reading should be a lot higher 27.9% and you would take at least three samples and then you have a button here where you can average the readings and then you get the average reading for that location and then what you have to do is basically also measure in a representative way in the field because the crop doesn't mature evenly everywhere in the field so Lee is just getting a sample from another location doing my best to stay on my feet trying to find a green one that's probably semi-respectable so there's still a lot of straw particles in there not very well-threshold what you want to have is only grains in there and it should be basically just one layer of grains or a little bit more than that so crush it again take our reading 27.7% and we can't do an average because I just did that and we only have one more reading in the moment so it's well and truly above 24 27, 28, 29 something like that you measured around up to 30% so I think it's probably around 28, 29 we're facing the final tricky decision to irrigate or not to irrigate, that is the question so we're considering how moist the soil is now how moist is the soil now? moist right we're considering what the weather's like what's the weather like? hot, dry and we're considering how long we'd expect until we harvest and our consensus is about 10 days to 2 weeks something of that range it'll be close to 2 weeks time before you're back to do the deed so we need this to last to finish properly I think it needs the 2 weeks but it's moist it's heavy clay and we do want our combine to stay on the ground not to explore the underground I vote keep it dry if it was an experiment and I knew that we would be doing hand harvesting I would put on another irrigation just for safety but we need to figure that we have to come and visit combine and so the carrying capacity of that soil will be the deciding factor and we can't delay harvest because we see some lodging coming in so I'll go with the majority vote yeah I agree so no more irrigation let's see but I pray for a little bit of rain tonight maybe well on recent patterns I think you'll probably have that wish granted so there we have it we want to irrigate again and it'll be in approximately 2 weeks we'll come back and harvest about no second I was on a trip last week and then Lee sent me a note that we had 70% lodging to when I came back yesterday afternoon the first thing I did was rush out to the field and then this is what I saw that's a lot more than 70% it's basically a complete mess now lodging I guess there can be many reasons for this but probably the primary reason is we've had a broadcast zone crop which is not anchored very deep in the soil unnecessary rain now I would say unnecessary rain and you can see it's all lodging in one direction here so we must have had some wind too I don't think we had too much nitrogen although that obviously sometimes contributes too so what we're going to do now Lee we're going to harvest it so as I explained in an earlier clip there's one crucial advantage if we take this section of crop here it's lodged there's still some airspace under the crop there's 3 or 4 inches of of airspace under there and that's a crucial difference the combine the combine won't have too much trouble as long as we're careful if it gets flatter than that then we are in real trouble and that's the concern ideally we probably should wait one more day but there's already threatening looking clouds over there so I think it might be time to act before it gets any worse another rain yesterday afternoon so I'm getting nervous too it is still quite wet underneath here but as long as we get through with the combine and pull it up I think we have no choice let's try it the whole field we need to get it initially cut and then after that you could have some re-operation it's easy, did you just boss? I know that's nice not classic, it's nice now we're at the business end where we mill the rice into a product to eat so the first thing that happened after we harvested the rice is we took it to drive it was at a moisture content of about 21% from memory and we took it and dried it in a flat bed dryer down to a moisture of about 14% so Martin's going to measure the moisture content of the sample before our rice and hopefully it's what our climate is so I can't actually measure the sample that has been in the mill because it's already milled but I have another sample here and the ideal moisture content for milling is between 13% and 14% so the first step would basically be to measure the moisture content and this is an example for a moisture meter the eerie moisture meter you put a small sample of grains in there and then you crush them and then by measuring the resistance it gives you the moisture content and this basically tells you that the sample that we have is still too wet we couldn't use that for milling it's more than 14% in this case and basically this would also tell us if it's right for milling between 12 and 14% or whether it's right for seeds what happens if you mill it when it's wetter than 14% if you mill it wetter then the grain is very soft and we get a lot of damage in the rice mill by basically the machines crushing the grains and so your milling yield would be a lot lower and what if it's too dry if it's too dry then it's too brittle and again because of mechanical stress you get more cracking because it's so brittle and again you get more losses for the drying there are different options this grain was dried in the flatbed dryer but the flatbed dryer is a very simple technology that can be locally produced and produces reasonably good quality but then there are also more sophisticated dryers like we have one over there which is a so-called recirculating batch dryer which allows us to produce really the optimum quality of the paddy before we do the milling after the grain has been dried to the appropriate moisture content it's then delivered to the mill and the first stage is the de-hulling where we have two rubber rollers set at a very close clearance to each other and one roller is travelling just a little bit slower than the other roller and that abrasion motion that pincer motion removes the husk from the rice it then goes on to a gravity table which then in a horizontal recirculating motion it's on a slight angle and that successfully removes the hulled rice the hulled brown rice from the rice that was not successfully hulled and the rice that was not successfully hulled goes back to be de-hulled again after that it goes through three stages of polishing an abrasion stone polisher a friction polisher then you also have a choice of a mist polisher if you want that final shall I call it sheen for a really quality high quality product that really looks as desirable as it tastes and there's one final process after the polishing process it's then graded for size both through a rotary sifter and through a length grader and that separates the hulled rice from the broken rice the final stage in a sophisticated rice mill is the colour sorter which is an ingenious piece of technology that runs streams of milled rice grain in a single grain stream there's sensors that sense the colour of individual grains and if the colour is not white enough basically that could be from poor milling it could be because it's a foreign object like a stone there's nothing as much fun as a stone in your rice the sharp jet of compressed air will remove the grain and so those at final high standard sorting processes is quite a common process in high standard rice mills and then hence you have the finished product a whole grain well milled rice with a known quantity of broken in it and that's really the objective of the whole process the good news is we made a profit that's good not a huge profit but a profit so we grew 5.24 tonnes to the hectare of rice and we've valued it at 14 pesos per kilogram here in the Philippines which is equivalent to about 30 US cents or 300 dollars per ton of paddy rice in summary I doubt these figures are particularly visible to the film we earned 440 dollars from the field we spent 350 dollars growing it so we made according to this $84 in profit which at least pays for the coffee we're drinking and a fair bit more well that's for the field but if we extrapolate this to a whole hectare which is what a normal farmer would probably have so that's a net profit of $335 per hectare so is that a normal profit so what a farmer would be happy with I think it's probably quite common particularly if you have deep wet irrigation and pumping cost to cover if you are an irrigated farmer in the Philippines who has access to canal water irrigation scheme water the typical profit is probably more like $500 per hectare that's what I remember measuring once so we're below that but that's primarily really the reason is because of the high irrigation cost which probably explains as you look across the rice growing world that dry season rice is generally confined to those locations where water is easy and cheap to access yeah it has to do good I think that wraps it up we've not become rich at least we haven't lost money I think we've learned a lot so we'll promise to do better next time right cheers