 Patricia, please start. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone tuning in to this 2022 warlog dialogue site event titled, Build Back Better, Solutions for Populations that Depend on Rice-Faced Agri-Food Systems, hosted by the International Rice Research Institute. My name is Patricia Vega, and I work on Communication and Advocacy for Healthier Rice at Erie. I am pleased to officially welcome you and facilitate today's discussion. Joining me for this session is an excellent roster of speakers from Africa Rice, the Philippine Rice Research Institute, or Phil Rice, and Erie. They will each present a scalable solution to meet the world's food and nutrition needs as we bounce back better from the devastating effects of COVID-19, climate change, and conflicts. After these presentations, during the latter part of our program, the floor will be open to accommodate questions submitted through the Q&A or chat box. So to kick off this exciting session, our first three speakers will talk about getting back to our feet, meeting nutrition needs post-COVID-19. Our first speaker is the head of the Rice Genetic Design and Validation Unit at Erie. She has developed an effective plant transformation system for indica rice and was involved in discovering genes that provide resistance to low phosphorus soils, drought, anaerobic conditions, tumbreaux, disease, and enhanced yield in rice. More notably, she has received prestigious awards as a member of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, including the LIPI Best Young Scientist Award, the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture Award, and the Indonesian Presidential Award. Please help me welcome Dr. Ines Lamet Lodi. Ines, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. Thank you for the kind introduction. Good morning and good evening, everyone. It is my great pleasure to be invited to join the Erie dialogue. And let me share my screen. My talk today is the biofortification using the biotech approach. And currently, almost 3.1 billion people globally cannot afford nutrient-adequate diets, reflecting the impact of rising consumer food prices during the pandemic. In Hangar, it's actually affected 46 million more people into 2021 compared to the 2022. And a total of 115 million more people since 2019 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. This amount to between 702 and 828 million people, around 8.9 to 10% of the world population. And this new alarming global estimate for micronutrient deficiency reveals the depth and the breadth of hidden hunger globally with one in two preschool-aged children and two to three women of reproductive age worldwide, having at least one micronutrient deficiency. In fact, the economic cost of malnutrition is huge that malnutrition children actually could earn about 20% less in adulthood. In India, for example, economic cost of micronutrient malnutrition is estimated between 0.8% and 2.5% of GDP, which is equivalent to $15 to $46 billion. And the main objectives of the agri-food system is to provide nutritionist food for a healthy nation, to provide employment and increase household income and in foreign exchange and generate tax revenues, and join delicious food central of a range of social events. If you look at the medium and long-term policy recommendation for the food system diet and nutrition in the wake of COVID-19, the first one is to invest in national and community agriculture to promote the production and commercialization of nutrient-dense staples and non-staples nutritious foods, which is one option, is the biofortification. And then the second is to strengthen the design modalities of the social protection programs and stimulate the means for nutritious foods, infects in behavior on eventually policy to support the increased nutrition food. And to biofortification is to fulfill all the complement, the needs of this healthier food. Biofortification through precision genetics, technology can help to fill the nutrition gap. And through the three-to-one concept, starting with the deployment of the golden rice followed by the stacking it with the high iron and the zinc rice. And basically to complement of the classical breeding approach to reach higher micronutrient content or the non-existing trade in rice, the biofortified rice with pro-vitamin A, which is known as a golden rice, which the reason approval of golden rice is at the milestone. This approval for commercial propagation in the Philippines demonstrates the potential of genetic emulsification as a transformative strategy pathway for nutrition, health, and food security. This biofortified rice with the pro-vitamin A intended to complement existing nutrition intervention to address vitamin A deficiency, affecting children and pregnant women, and also lactating women. And the biofortified rice with the increased iron and zinc was developed to complement the pro-vitamin A rice, the golden rice to fulfill the three-in-one concept. And our high iron and zinc rice product concept entails on obtaining milk rice with iron concentration of more than 10 ppm and more than 30 ppm zinc, representing about 30% of estimated average requirement of iron and zinc in humans. This yield will need to be within the range, the yield of rice itself should be still within the range of the counterpart. And eventually, it would be stacked with golden rice and the quality should match with the parent varieties. And I just want to show you a bit of the result of the reason field trial that's we conducted in Bangladesh. We conducted on two years in a row that if you can see here that the average yield of the iron and zinc events in Bangladesh during borough season and 2020-21 is actually comparable with the control. But if you look at the iron concentration here, that it is actually even exceed our target. Our target is about 10 ppm, and in eight locations and in five locations in the consecutive years, it reached far higher than that compared to the control. And we can compare the value with the control here. And the zinc concentration also could reach up to 40 ppm, which is a lot higher than the current zinc, classical breeding zinc rice, which reached around between 24 to 28 ppm. And in the Philippines, we conducted confined tests in two locations over three years. And we were so pleased now that we just got a permit to conduct multi-location trial. And this was done after risk assessment and public consultation with the help of the communication. And it was done by our counterpart, Philippine Rice Institutes. Sorry, in a sense, if we look at the potential impact of the current level of zinc reach in Bangladesh and Philippines of high iron and zinc rice, we can actually reduce the prevalence quite significantly. Here, this following slide is the analysis conducted by Eric Boyd, the Harfers Plus lead nutritionist, showing comparison of high iron and zinc rice and 45 rice. So when consumption of this rice provides around 60% of daily energy intake, like in Bangladesh and the Philippines, the prevalence of inadequate zinc intake among women of childbearing age is significantly reduced by 92.4% when the current rice consumption is replaced by high iron and zinc rice. Compared to the replacement by 35 ppm of 45 rice, that reduced the prevalence by 70%. And by 40.5%, using the conventionally bred zinc rice sprayed by the foliar zincs. So overall, the transgenic high iron zinc rice or the biotech high iron inside show high potential for complementing the fortification approach that ultimately reduce the prevalence of zinc deficiency in women and children in target country. So the combining the item in a iron zinc in biotech rice is basically on any given day that three in one in rice is a substitute one for one with the non-biophortified rice in Filipino diets with no extra cost to consumer. And vitamin A intakes of the purest 40% can be doubled for the entire population. And zinc intakes from rice can be more than double. And iron intakes can increase by five times from this staple for the entire population. And this was without any extra cost with the consumers. And the idea, we will combine the consumer traits eventually with the input traits. So this will also allow stimulate farmer to ease for their adoption. So I think that is the overall thought that I want to share with you. I hope it was not too fast, but together we believe that we can pivot and accelerate this need of fulfilling nutrition for our community. Thank you for the opportunity over back to back. Thanks, Ines. So to the members of our audience, just a reminder that you will get to address your queries for Ines and the rest of our speakers during the Q&A portion of the program. So please keep your questions coming in the Q&A box. Now let's move on to our next speaker, who is the program leader for the Rice Sector Development Program, a grain quality and post-harvest technologist and principal scientist at Africa Rice. Dr. Sally Atangani Denden is creating rice germplasm in Africa for routine quality traits demanded by the market and is leading the effort to produce low GI rice. This technology is transforming the livelihoods of rural women across Africa. Sally co-leads a consortium of 20 European and African institutions who have recently been awarded a grant on combating malnutrition in Africa through diversification of the food system. He is an ISDB 2020 Transform Fund winner and recipient of the 2011 Best Young Scientist Award from the Republic of Cameroon. Sally, over to you. Thank you very much. Thanks to everyone who is listening. Thank you, Erie, for inviting me to talk on this Bollock Dialogue 2022 on rice nutrient management. Rice is a very important- Sally, can you put your slides in presenter mode please? Thank you. Rice is a very important food material for the world at large and for Africa. And how we manage its nutrients, it's very important in people's health and livelihood. If you look at the demand for rice in Africa, you find that it has been increasing over the years. So, and it is now projected to that consumption in Africa would really be more than the average in the world. So, we see that rice is the most important source of energy for West Africa and the third most important in the world of Africa. And that demand is growing at more than 6% a year, faster than any other staple in sub-Saharan Africa. And there are several reasons for this. First is consumer preference. People like the taste of rice. The light rice because it is cheaper, it's easy to find under local grocery shops. It's easy to cook. So, consumers are turning to rice. The second issue is about urbanization. The population is shifting towards the urban areas and they are more in urban centers. We know people are involved in a lot of activities and so they don't have time to cook their traditional or indigenous dishes that probably take longer time. And then we have population growth. A lot of people are more people are inhabiting the earth. And so we need to feed more people. And so we need to develop better ways of grain rice because rice is becoming a staple everywhere, not just in Asia, that used to be the case, but in Africa as well. Now, if rice now is staple, what happens to the diet of the people? There's a change in the diet. People no longer eat their indigenous foods. And so they tend to eat mostly cereals or tubers, which are very low in micronutrient content, as well as in proteins. If you look at a study done by Joy and Nicole in 2014, showed that rice deficiency for calcium, zinc, and iodine are very high across Africa. Even with the consumption of iodized salt, deficiency of iron was a little bit low, but in areas where fighting concentrations were high and animal proteins were low, we find out that that risk jumps from 5% to 43%. And this is the case for most smallholder households in Africa, and they don't have the money to buy protein, soft animal proteins, and even vegetables that they grow are seasonal. So storage facilities, preservation for vegetables and fruits are really lacking. So it is not surprising to find that there is high deficiency risk for essential micronutrients in the continent. And this translates to something and an iron deficiency or anemia in a lot of people, especially pregnant women and young children. We did a study at the level of Africa rice and also looked at the literature, meta-analysis. And so what came out clear was that white rice has low micronutrient content and high glycemic properties compared to parboiled rice. That but means what? White rice is rice which is just a straight meal and that is what is mostly consumed in many parts of the world, be it in Asia or in Africa. The consumption of white rice is close to 70% and while parboiled rice is less, it's about 30%. In some countries, you may have parboiled rice consumption going up to about 95%. This is the case of Nigeria. And it was quite strange for us to find that. So the question we ask our servers, can we identify rice varieties with acceptable physical and eating quality traits that have higher nutrient content and lower digestibility after processing? Because once you process white, once you process rice, what you basically have is a carbohydrate because all the nutrients that are present in the pericab are getting rid of, are gotten rid of during the processing, during mealing and the husking and mealing. So what you need to do is, how do we process rice that preserves this nutritional content? Or do we have varieties that we can process and that also have those nutrient content? So we did work working on three main areas. First, we are screening rice germ present in Africa for routine quality traits. That means those traits that are demanded by the market, physical quality. And then next, we are also looking at the protein content, the iron content, the zinc content and the phytid content. Why? Because phytid is very important in influencing the bioavailability of these nutrients. So, and we are identifying some promising lines. Promising lines which we could scale immediately through the seed system or use them as donors in breeding programs. The second thing that we do is really to produce low glycemic rice with high iron, zinc and magnesium content through improved parboiling. And what is parboiling is really a process whereby the rice is hydrothermally treated before milling. So in so doing, the nutrients that are in the pericarp of the rice migrate into the creosate crevices. So that during milling, the milling process, those nutrients are preserved. And so a rice, that rice becomes a nutrient capsule, higher nutrient content compared to wide rice. So this is really what we try to do. And we look at, we try to identify varieties that have high nutrient content and that are acceptable by the population or the market. And then we do the parboiling. So the third thing is that we were involved in a lot of diversification options in rice-based systems, making sure that people don't only grow rice, but they can grow rice along other crops like vegetables or fish so that they can have a balanced diet and also have more revenue for their families. So what are the key results that we have? So we have analyzed close to 2,800 gemplasm from the gene band of Africa rice for grain-quality protein, iron and zinc content. Secondly, we have developed a processing method and identified some varieties that are good for parboiling and that have lower glycemic properties. The third, we have started the scaling of this low glycemic and better nutrient rice through different innovation platforms across Africa. Presently, we have installed systems in 36 communities in 11 countries and this is directly touching an estimated 200,000 rice consumers annually. And the third thing that we have developed some partnerships for scaling diversified options not to combat malnutrition. And different partners are involved in this part in this consortium. We have the CGIR centers, European universities, the World Food Program through the Center of Excellence for Malnutrition and then we have agribusiness vocational trading centers and governments, especially government of Kodewa, for example, it's really engaged in using rice as a vehicle for direct fortification and we are working with them on that. So we have some varieties, especially the Glaberrin rice that have shown higher iron, zinc and protein content and when processed as brown rice. So we are also encouraging our processors and to process this rice and market it as brown rice and we are training them on how to package this rice so that it could increase their share of life. We have also observed that straight milling Glaberrimas result in high degree of milling. Therefore, we're encouraging that Glaberrimas should be parboiled before milling and this parboiling does what it reduces breakage during milling and at the same time decreases the glycemic values. It also increases the mineral and vitamin content of this rice. So you can see clearly where we are promoting improved parboiling technologies. So what happens is that we identify the right varieties, the parboiling regimes and the milling regimes. So you could see that we could get very low glycemic rice with very low glycemic properties. So for example, only six is an aromatic variety which is highly appreciated by the population. So by parboiling it will reduce the glycemic in this and also increase its nutrient content and you can see where we have installed the system across Africa. And the most important thing here is that these parboiling activities being carried out by women, women groups across Africa. And so by directly installing this improved system that use rice husk as energy source when we are empowering the women, creating equity and we're reducing deforestation. So this are and we're also adding value to rice husk which is a by-product along the rice valley chain. So you could see here we, these are the women groups and you could see one of the parboiling centers that the women are around, you can see the vessels there. So also we have started a program on direct fortification using parboiling really. And this really involves adding the ion zinc and magnesium in at the steaming stages. So here we have tried several different parboiling techniques with different varieties. So we have used horoluc 6 and the CB1. The CB1 is a pigmented variety. I know how pigments are very important in fighting against cancerous cells. So this pigmented rice, we tried both varieties and you see clearly that when we fortified the rice, ion content jumped significantly. The zinc content also increased and also even though the magnesium content did not change. So whether we use either direct-party parboiling or the brown parboiled rice, there was no difference. The parboiling method did not affect, but actually the fortification process is very important. So just to summarize my talk, we have identified some varieties in the ginbound that have higher nutrient content. And those varieties, we have been able to develop a processing method that improves the nutritional content and lowers the glycemic index. And we are now pushing those varieties in the field for farmers and they are adopting it. Thank you very much. Thank you Sally. The next part of our session focuses on solutions for climate change. We have with us Dr. Norvi Manigbas, scientist one and chief science research specialist at the plant breeding and biotechnology division of the rice. Norvi finished his post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Crop Science, RDA South Korea. He completed his PhD in crop physiology and plant breeding at the University of the Philippines, Los Baños as a fail-servin scholar. He is involved in collaborative research with the National Research Institutes of South Korea, Japan, USA, India, Sri Lanka, China, Taiwan and the SAN countries. Here to present an initiative on climate smart rice, let's all welcome Dr. Norvi over to you, sir. Thank you very much and good evening. Good morning to everyone. Thank you for this opportunity to share my talk on climate smart rice. Thank you for Erie and for inviting Phil Rice. And I would like to present this climate smart rice in the point of view of a breeder. So that means to say that most of my talk will deal on how we produce the climate smart rice based on the ecosystems which are very marginal and many farmers are really affecting in these areas. And we want them to have the better varieties, those that are adapted to climate change rice in the Philippines. Next slide, please. So I will show you the breeding strategy and the process by which we develop climate rice varieties in the Philippines for rain-fed drought, high and low temperature, salinity and submergence. You know, in salinity alone, our hectarets in terms of affected rice lands under saline condition is about 200,000 hectares. And with drought, high temperature and submergence could be more than 300,000 hectares and more than 15,000 farmers affected in these areas. So let me show you a chart flow of how we produce our climate prices in the Philippines, particularly in these ecosystems. Of course, each ecosystem has its own objective, especially for yield is insect pests and this is resistance and grain quality and adapted to this kind of ecosystem. So we choose the parents from different countries and from our own germplasm, which are suited for rain-fed drought, high and low temperature, salinity and submergence. For example, we use the sub-1 gene for submergence to incorporate this in our modern varieties. And we use the pokali from Sri Lanka and other countries with salinity tolerance. For high temperature, we use N22 from India to incorporate the heat tolerance straight to our varieties. Of course, with high yielding and low temperature, we use our own varieties, our local varieties that can adapt to low temperature. And for the rain-fed drought, of course, we use our traditional varieties and some varieties from other countries that we get from Erie and our collaborators from Southeast Asia and Asia. So of course, we know that we start, we will start with hybridization of parents and then the selection and the segregating population. And then afterwards, four to six years is devoted to performance trial where we have the advanced observational nursery, preliminary year trial and multi-year trial, which are screened or planted in different areas in countries where this ecosystem occur. So after that, we are confident that if we have done the multi-adaptation trial in many areas in the countries, then the breeding lines that we produce are entered into the national cooperative testing where we further see the performance of the variety in terms of yield, insect pests and disease resistance, grain quality traits and other traits that are very important to this ecosystem. So it would take us 10 years before the variety release can be done and we allow two years so that it is done for the seed production and ultimately going into the farmer's level. Next please. In the next slide, you will see the screening procedures on how we develop these climate smart prices, especially for rain-fed drought, salinity and submergence. We have thousands of lines that are screened in our breeding nurseries in the glass house for drought, seedling states to early vegetative states and then we rewater after the stress. For example, we stress them at the seedling states for 10 to 14 days and then 24 days from water we grow up with the IR-64 as susceptible check and we have to score them on leaf drying and leaf rolling. Anything that is seven and nine scores will be discarded. And for salinity, we screen at seedling states. This is also a protocol that our group at Erie, when I was at Erie, we developed this protocol and now we are using it at field rice so that we can screen at seedling states, different kinds of populations and we use our FL-478 with Erie develop with our group with Dr. Gregorio and of course IR-29 as susceptible. And for the submergence tolerance straight screening at seedling, we do that in the water tank and we normally screen them for 14 days under submergence and then after that, we take some course at three days after submergence, seven days after submergence and then until 21 days after submergence and those that survive are selected for further evaluation for yield and other traits that we want for submergence. And we do that also in the field. We have a water tank just like at Erie. When I was at Erie, I was the one doing the submergence and deep water screening. And we also do it here at field rice. 30 days after planting of our breeding lines, we submerge them for seven to 14 days and check every day after five days the performance of the lines and the check varieties. If the check varieties, susceptible ones are dead then we withdraw the water and select from those that survive from the test. Next slide, please. This is also what we do in the screening for rain-fed drought. We install a tensiometer, water potential reading, piezometer, rain gauge and data lager for percent volumetric water content, let it leave kind of a temperature and leave rolling score. So this is a protocol that we do every time we do the screening for drought tolerance of our breeding lines. Next slide, please. Also, we have the environmental and genotypic responses under the reproductive drought because most of our screening are done under reproductive drought so that we are confident that every breeding line that we select are really giving us good yield. And unlike when you have screened at vegetative if they are tolerant, then you are not sure if they will give you grains or yield after reproductive. So the best time to do the screening for drought is at reproductive stage and we follow the leaf rolling score by the SES of Erie. And here we also do the leap condensate temperature of our lines based on the temperature of the leaves so that we can also know the effect of drought on the leaves of our breeding lines. Next, please. Here, I'm showing you the process that we go to the high temperature screening so that our RISES can withstand to the high temperature even up 30, more than 35 degrees up to 38 degrees centigrade. Please go back to the next slide, yeah. So of course, yes, we do the process by growing the F1 identification of the high temperature donors and using biotechnological tools, we also apply marker assist selection, QTL analysis, point fertility evaluation which you will see later on. So this is very important for us for the high temperature tolerance screening because this is done in the field where high temperature, of course, during the dry season. So we know exactly where the high temperature occurs in these areas and we group them by the flowering date so that all of our entries will coincide with the high temperature and we will have a correct evaluation of the breeding lines that we plant in the field. And that is monitored by the micro environmental instrument for near canopy enrichment in rice which were donated by Japan to us. And with that, we can know the percent relative humidity and temperature in that site that we put our breeding lines. And then we select for decidable plant type, resistance and grain quality and yield. And then later on to the national cooperative test which I discussed to you earlier. Next slide please, slide please. We also do the pollen fertility. This is done by my student in Nupilos Baños. So we also analyze the pollen fertility and the temperature ranges in each of the location in Nupilos Baños, in Nuevesilla in the field and in Nuevesilla in the glass house. So we also do the glass house screening for this. And from this data we show that most of the populations of the breeding lines we can also select those that has high pollen fertility in spite of 39 degrees centigrade temperature. Next, please. Dr. Narvi, can you move a little backward so we can see your face? Yes. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, okay, thank you. Okay, next slide please. This is a result done by my student in 2016 where we have the high temperature QTL analysis. And we found out that there are new QTLs this highlighted in red, the new QTLs that we have identified from the previous, this is a new marker that we have identified and we compare it to the other QTLs that was published in chromosome one, three and four and five. So in chromosome 10 we had identified this QTL for high temperature tolerance. Next, please. And also for the low temperature, we have the screening and for seedling and reproductive states. And so we do this chattel breeding in one of our collaborator station in Baguio city, where, not in Baguio, but near Baguio. And this is done under field condition where we have the seedling for cold screening during the dry season and also the reproductive cold screening during the wet season. So this is mainly done by our collaborative effort to the university there in Latinidad, Benguet. And we select under non-stress and under stress condition so that we can know the trait under non-stress, the yield, for example, and other desirable agronomic traits. And also during the screening procedure where we put our breeding materials under cold spell and temperature under field condition, we select for spikelet fertility, maturity, cold tolerance, and the typical acceptability and yield. And when we have produced the breeding lines, we nominated the national cooperative test where we evaluate further our lines ready for the variety released later on. So next slide will show us some of the climate smart rice varieties that we have released in 2020. So you will notice that the latest was in 2020 for rain pad drought, which were bred by field rice, UPLB, and Erie. And you will note the maturity and maximum yield. Also the 2020 release varieties under saline which were bred by Erie and field rice. Next please. And these are the varieties in 2020. The 2009 was an old one of the Subvergence sub one IR64 sub one. And we have new one which is N6RC 590 which was released in 2020 for Subvergence which was bred by Erie. And recently also in 2022, we have the first high temperature tolerant rice that was released as the first heat tolerant rice varieties in the Philippines in 2020 bred by field rice. And we also have four new varieties that are recommended for cool temperature areas in the Philippines, especially in the northern part of the Philippines. So this is in 2019 was all bred mostly by field rice and Erie. And I think without that ends my presentation and thank you very much. Thank you so much Dr. Narvi. So to complete our series of presentations, our final presenter will speak about an initiative in easing tensions to speed up seed exchange in South and Southeast Asia. He has played a crucial role in initiating and catalyzing the impact of the Seeds Without Borders program in the Southeast and South Asian regions. His expertise and persistence in forging the seed sharing policy agreements have resulted in new and better seeds reaching the hands and fields of farmers in these regions. This multi-country seed sharing agreement is considered an important component of regional food and nutrition security and is a key contributor to the mitigation of the adverse effects of climate change in agriculture. Please help me welcome Dr. Umesh Shankar Singh, Erie's Asia and Africa advisor for research and partnership. Dr. Umesh, the floor is yours. Thanks Patricia. Good morning and good evening everyone. Let me first share my screen. We all know that the seed is the most critical input in agriculture and quality seed, availability of quality seed and basically to the farmer, the local level to the farmer is the must to ensure the good agricultural productivity. But most of the countries have very close seed system, particularly the varietal system. They are not open to share the variety, they give to others and take from others. And it is in spite of the fact that we all know that varietal performance depend on agricultural conditions rather than their geographical location. And the also facing the problem, as you can see the practically many varieties are moving across the border illegally. You know, Surala is one of the mega variety of India. It was really initially for one of the states in India, but later on moved to the entire country and it was never really in Bangladesh, but in 2013, one of the survey by Bangladesh Rice Sanctuary, it was rated as number one variety in our region. Similarly, many Indian varieties are popular in Nepal and Vaisivasa and also in Myanmar. And there is record that around 14 varieties during 90 was sent from India, 15 countries in Africa. And some of them are still in cultivation. And you know that the Surala Subban is now released from the five countries. And one of the potato variety I mentioned here is already released from the seven countries and from the South East, South of America and also West, Southeast and the South Asia. And it is already in the process of being released from the number of countries from Africa. So it shows that some of the varieties have very wide adaptability, but we have not really been able to exploit this potential so far. We all know, as the Lord we mentioned that variety development takes a very long time, six to eight years, some time more than that. And after that, they have to go for the evaluation and then again seed multiplication, first from breeder to foundation to certified only then it can be the farmer's field. So we undertook this activity because I was leading this, it's the starland rice program of here in South Asia. I'm facing this problem of varieties fast. So basically we start to undertook this activity to speed up the process of variety release, awareness creation, seed multiplication and variety load scaling to make more efficient use of our resources because we have variety liberation for not only the use time, lot of time, but also a lot of resources to encourage the farmer's seed system to promote the seed and variety replacement rates and to encourage the seed and business and exchange across the countries. Actually, what happened in India released the first flood term in variety developed by here in South Asia in 2009 and I was making a presentation in Bangladesh. You know, flood is the very important in this case in Bangladesh. So after my presentation, the minister asked me why not to bring the three tons of this seed of the breeder seed of South Asia and promote in Bangladesh, but she was told by the scientists and the technical people, it's not possible for his need to be tested in Bangladesh only then he can take in the seed chain. So she was very dynamic. Ladies, he asked me to come to her office next week and she put up a very simple question that the till 1947 on India and Bangladesh were same country, same variety was applicable for both parts, but how by putting the physical boundary they will start behaving differently. And then she asked me to discuss with Indian government and probably we can have some agreement. So I discussed with Indian secretary, he was very positive. Then he organized the workshop in Bangladesh and basically 16 and 17 February in 2013 and India and Bangladesh, as you can see here, they signed the agreement to go for non-variable release, then go for reciprocated commission of evaluation data for variety release and reducing the time for the evaluation of varieties which already released in the neighboring countries under same agricultural condition, after they agreed to reduce the evaluation time for mass-generated varieties, particularly where we have transferred the trade in the already popular varieties and then pre-release seed multiplication and promotion. This was also important because variety you cannot take to the farmer's field unless they are properly released and notified. But that basically, a lot of the, you can use a lot of time. So encourage private sector, of course, that was another aspect, the humanization of seed system. So after this agreement in Nepal, even India and Bangladesh signed it, the Nepal secretary was visiting India and Indian secretary spoke to him and showed the importance of this agreement, how useful this could be for this region. And then Nepal and the Erie government of Nepal internationalized institute, we jointly organized next workshop on 17th and 18th October in Kathmandu. And next agreement was signed by the secretary culture from three countries and is your signatory, I say, the facilitator of this agreement. This was in the way of past breaking agreement where three countries agreed to share the evaluation data and varieties released in their respective countries for release and commercialization in other two countries for similar agricultural condition. And agreement which was earlier signed by the Bangladesh and India was extended to the Nepal so that they can part of the data agreement. So it was very important and part of the agreement where they could not only share the variety but also the evaluation data. And other countries agreed to use the evaluation data of the country who is sharing the variety and based on that notify the variety in their country. And then again, these two agreements were confined to only rice. So once we have the next workshop, we call it seed without butter workshop in same with Cambodia on 19th and 10th June in 2012. Here we invited several countries and the Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and nearly the signed agreement and later on it was joined by Myanmar and Bhutan. So this agreement, through this agreement, the seed agreement was extended beyond rice to include leather cereals, pulses, wild seeds, vegetables, sugar cane and fiber crops. And these countries also agreed to recognize each other's seed certificate process. It means if the seed is certified as greater seed in one country, it will be accepted as greater seed in all of the signatory countries. And these agreements were not only signed but they are also implemented on ground and proving to be very useful for these countries. India has so far notified 10 rice varieties from Bangladesh and two from Nepal and already in the process of notifying four more varieties from the Bangladesh and some of these, they could save not only resources but a lot of time. And some of these varieties basically introduced in India directly from Bangladesh ever without being tested in India and moving very fast and they are likely to become the bigger varieties here. And then Nepal released three Indian rice varieties that are a big success in Nepal. And India directly notified one potato variety from Bhutan in 2019. And it's not only notified that variety but also directly imported 10 quintals of bigger seed from Bhutan and introduced in the seed cane so that they can mobilize the seed cane fast. And this variety is also likely to become mega variety in India, it's doing very well. And similar provision of seed agreements are now part of the seed policies in Nepal, Bangladesh, Cambodia. And similarly, many other countries are now working towards basically implementing the segment and using making advantage of this. So there were some basically, you can say, the side during the same reports up really facilitated the discussion between India and this thing Indian secretary and the Ministry of Agriculture in Cambodia and they agreed to collaborate on various aspects. So these are some of the side you spill over effects. I heard Indian government supported the training for 10 seed experts from Cambodia in India with the help of the area on the basically quality seed production, certification and quality monitoring and in India with the help of the area. And there is provision in the cycle in mind to meet regularly at this high level, secretary level, analyze the progress and take the decision to move off far away. There are any participants how to move that. So next meeting we have planned in now in the Bhutan and from 21st to 24th of November. So some of the gender items are the establishment of nodal cell in each country to look after particularly implementation of this agreement, expedite implementation. And then this agreement is being extended to other countries. Vietnam and Philippines have already expressed their need and the interest to join this agreement they might be doing in Bhutan. And then again, the expert suggestion of the Philippines they have now in going to include the tuber and root and tuber crops and Bhutan has suggested to include the fruit crops under this agreement. And then so far this agreement covers the varieties developed by CEA centers and also by public sector with organization in different countries. But now there is a request from the private sector production of seed industries of India. They have requested to include the private sector varieties and they have agreed to take care of the ITR and the business issues. This agreement will expedite the movement of varieties from one country to other countries for them and rest of the things they can take care of. Then develop and on the variety database what are the varieties available in different countries along with their characteristics to develop this database and share with different countries. Then there are the other provisions of the agreement like joint variety revolution and release harmonized guidelines, exchange of the business and other things. So these are the things we are going to discuss and probably go for implementation of these because so far we have implemented only the sharing of the varieties and seed. Then there is the demand to expand the scope of this agreement to prompt cooperation in the variety development seed system, capacity building and also how to leverage this agreement to basically strengthen the food and notice the security of the different signatory countries. And then of course we are planning to invite not only the silver secondary country but also Vietnam and Philippines who have shown interest to join it and then the Fiji has shown the interest and then we are also planning to have around eight of the country as the observer to showcase the advantage of this agreement if they are interested to join us. So this is what briefly I wanted to say. Thank you very much. Thank you Dr. Amesh and the rest of our speakers for your very informative presentations. Some of the common threads that we can observe in your talks is the importance of considering market demand, their rigorous research involved and the extensive partnerships developed to bring these innovations to communities who need it the most. So we will now proceed with the question and answer portion. Questions from the audience have started to come in during the presentations and I will read some of them. So the first question in the chat box and the Q&A box is for Dr. Norvey. Has any of the varieties developed in the Philippines been tested in other countries such as for example in Sub-Saharan Africa? Yeah, that is a very good question but unfortunately we have just tested in under Philippine conditions. If we are going to test that in other countries I think there will be a form of agreement where we all collaboration where we can test our varieties and of course their varieties to us so that we can have a germplasm exchange of these varieties that we have released. None so far, but we can, we can, we can. Thank you so much Dr. Norvey and I think I will have a follow up question for Dr. Umesh in terms of seed exchange and partnerships. In your presentation earlier you talked about potentially bringing in the public the private sector, sorry private sector in the seeds without borders program. What do you see as the benefits and challenges of including the private sector in this previously public sector initiative? I think the major problem we were facing with the private sector is that they had their own IPR issues and how to tackle that but the request came from private sector itself. You know that the petition of seed industry of India they cover around the 70% seed production in this country and most of the multinationals are part of that. They have requested us what they want that they're using the segment just like they want to move the variety from India to Bangladesh. They can move through this agreement without spending the time for testing in Bangladesh but IPR issues and we don't want to be involved there at the same time, who will be their business partner they can deal at their own level. This agreement can only help them to mobilize the varieties from one signature country to another signature country. Even Vietnam is very keen to include private sector that will be also in the picture. So this is the agenda I mentioned but we are going to discuss the next workshop and discuss it here. Thanks so much, Dr. Imesh. Our next question in the chat box is for Inez. Does Irie or is Irie using genetic modification or gene editing and race improvement? Thank you for the question. Yes, Irie used both precision technology for race improvement. The example is high iron and zinc rice and golden rice is developed through genetic modification for this high iron and zinc rice we actually use the gene from apples and from rice. And for gene editing, we work on disease resistance, we work on yield improvement and for disease resistance example is bacterial leaf blight and tangro but not everything can be done through gene editing because we tried also gene editing for improving iron and zinc but the level is much less than if we introduced the gene from apple and rice another gene from rice. Thank you over to Pat. Thanks Inez. And this last question is for Dr. Sally. Can you elaborate on how Africa rice was able to engage women's groups to adopt the parboiling technology for improved nutrition and how this has impacted on their livelihoods and communities? Thank you very much. Thank you. The first level of engagement for the women was really to organize them in what we call the multi-stakeholder platforms. So on these women groups it's worth noting that parboiling is predominantly carried out by women in South Africa. So they organize themselves in some groups but now we went in to include other actors who are not within those groups like microfinance institutions we brought in equipment fabricators that the party produces so that they could produce the varieties that were suitable for parboiling and responded well to the market. So we have these women groups in over 39 communities in 11 countries so far and it's only growing because the knowledge people get on parboiling because we provide them training they get to know what they are selling they can easily market their products they have rebranded parboiled rice in a different way and diabetes is increasing type two diabetes is increasing worldwide. So people are looking for very low glycemic foods. So if rice becomes one of them you can see how transformative it could be for our society. Thank you very much. Thank you to our speakers for their responses to these questions. This time maybe invite everyone to open their cameras for a photo opportunity. Do we have everyone? This is a webinar attendees. This is for the panelists sorry, Ken do we have all the panelists in the screen and just let me know when you're taking the photo. Tony, Ken. All right, ready. It's done. To draw the session to a close let's hear from our distinguished speakers their final message on how rice producing and rice consuming communities can build back better agri-food systems to ensure food and nutrition security. Shall we start with Inez? Thank you. I think my final message is complimenting other interventions biofortification through precision genetic technology can help to significantly reduce micronutrient prevalence by stacking pro-vitamin A traits with high iron and zinc traits in melt rice with no extra cost to consumer and producer. Thank you. Thank you Inez. Let's move on to Sally. Thank you. I would say increasing rice productivity in rice-based systems is important not of Africa but globally or global food security and nutrition. That varieties and methods that preserve the micronutrient content and reduce the glycemic properties of rice such as hard boiling coupled with direct fortification should be promoted since rice is a major staple and is becoming also a major staple in Africa. And that diversification of rice-based systems should be promoted to diversify the diet and the income of small-holder farmers worldwide. Thank you. Thank you Sally. Now, Dr. Morvey, may we hear from you? Yeah, from that presentation that I show there should be always a deployment of these varieties in the areas where farmers can really use these varieties. And we have been doing that in the past. What we would like to emphasize here is to strengthen and sustain them so that and support them so that the deployment of these varieties in these areas where farmers really are capable or could use these varieties is a very challengeable effort. And slowly but surely we are doing this in the ecosystem where more farmers can benefit from our varieties. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Morvey and Blast. Definitely not least, Dr. Amesh, your final thoughts. Yeah, basically, you know that the taking the varieties to the farmers field as fast as possible is a big challenge, we all know. Even variety development, evaluation, then the seed system that takes a very long time ranging from six to 12 years, a lot of resources. So this agreement is already helping a lot to taking these varieties. I told that India has released the 12 varieties from Nepal and Bangladesh. And many of them are doing so well. Similarly, potato variety is doing amazingly well. So this can save a lot of time and resources and now it covers most of the crop, not only the rice alone. So this can be big help to possibly to use the variety. It is up to the important country. They want to test it one year or they want to directly take to the seed system. It is up to them. Like India even did not go for one year testing. The directory introduced in the seed system during seed multiplication itself, they found that these varieties are good enough not to stop them from being stable because they are tested up in this other country. So this saved a lot of resources. And that is the biggest advantage so we are looking for more countries to join it and go for the saving of these varieties that will be big help for all of us. Thank you, Dr. Ramesh. We appreciate your thoughtful and persuasive remarks which will undoubtedly trigger conversations and actions towards making our agri-food systems more resilient to crisis. We thank our speakers for their time and for sharing the excellent and meaningful work that they and their organizations have done and are continually doing. We thank our participants here in Zoom and watching on the live stream for being with us. Good afternoon, good evening, good morning wherever you are. Thank you for being with us and have a great day.