 The main objective of the project was to generate options to farmers, to provide new options to farmers that will allow them to increase food production without putting extra pressure on the environment of uplands which are very fragile. So that farmers are able to produce through higher yield of rice, produce more rice from less land and even using less labour. Another innovative feature of this project is that we did not look at the rice crop alone. We all know that rice in uplands is grown as a part of the overall cropping systems. So we focused our work on the rice based systems where rice together with many other upland crops are being grown in a way that the overall productivity of the system can be enhanced. So by working at the systems level the main idea behind the project was to not only to produce enough food but then through that process allow farmers to diversify, provide them options to diversify into other income generating activities and that in totality will improve their livelihoods. The key aspect of the project is to involve farmers from the beginning of the research process itself. So farmer participatory research and technology validation constituted the core research approach within the project. Farmers were involved from the very beginning, from the time when we started the research process to identify what are their technology needs to the actual testing of those technologies, rice varieties on their fields and it was not only done on their fields but under their own management. So we interacted with farmers continuously, received their feedback on what they liked, what they did not like so that we were able to modify our technology programs for the next cycle to better reflect the farmer's needs. With the development and the validation of quite a large number of varieties, improved rice varieties in these four countries, we focused directly on making those varieties available to the farmers. It is no good just to have the varieties if the farmers don't have access. So project directly was involved in the production of the seeds of improved varieties and making those varieties available to the farmers. In our test of these varieties, the farmers participatory trials, we established that these varieties produce anything between 200 kilo extra yield per hectare to as much as one ton per hectare extra yield. Now in upland environments, these are substantial gains and a farmer who is able to produce this extra yield and get more production then would be able to feed the family. The potential impact of these improved rice technologies would be to help reduce hunger by three to four months for an average upland rice family and that kind of impact is substantial when you think about the lack of enough food for these people. But not only the impact will remain at that level, we expect that the farmers would be able to diversify into other crops and other activities. Once their food security, they feel that their food security is assured and they can go into the more cash cropping and other income generating activities and through that process it will help improve their income and turn the outcome of this rice technology into a process by which the overall improvement on farmer's livelihood will start to take place.