 January 1986 I was invited by Dr. Swaminathan to be part of a team that went to Cambodia then known as Kampuchea and it was Goethef Kush, it was Don Packridge and myself and so we went there for about 10 days in January 86 because it is such a compelling example of how genetic conservation is is so critical particularly you know for countries like Cambodia that are so reliant on agriculture and in this case so reliant on rice production. So the Erie program came in and we looked around and we were we were shocked I would say in that first mission we couldn't quite believe what we saw but we started to talk to people we started to talk to the government officials we started to talk to everyday folks the varieties were lost because with all that dislocation with the fact that everybody moved from the countryside and then they went through this horrendous period of you know work slave camps basically and also being told you can't plant this deep water rice and and people were so hungry they ate their rice seeds right so you basically lost so much of the genetic resources the the rice genetic resources which were essential in Cambodia because 85% of the fields were were rainfed however we have a good news story and the good news story was that luckily well probably more than luck very strategically Erie had sent in some collectors I don't personally know the names who who actually did this but I believe it was 72 and 73 just towards the period where the production and the you know the turmoil began there had been a collection of rice varieties traditional rice varieties and I believe over 750 varieties probably more than that were actually collected and stored in the Erie geneback so we did our checks on we called up the folks in the geneback and we found out that yes indeed we've got all these varieties that were collected at that point about 13 or 14 years previously so over a period of several years part of the Erie program in Cambodia was actually to reintroduce those varieties and we had one plant we had a couple of plant breeders there Ram Chowdhury Edwin Havier and they worked on reintroduction of these traditional varieties and many of those varieties then farmers you know grabbed them went with them multiplied them I can't underestimate the importance of the human resources and as I mentioned the human resources had been decimated as a result of the war people had either been killed or they'd fled as refugees and disappeared off the map as far as Cambodia was concerned so a major initial focus of our work was on capacity building and over you know a period of about 12 15 years or so about 6,000 Cambodians were trained by Erie at all levels many of them of course were trained in country and at one point we had a team of about five or six Erie scientists working there but many of them we you know we brought them back to Erie and to this day if you go and look at the organizational chart of of Cardi and you look at it over the last several years the people who were running the organization the the current director for example Makara as his PhD in Australia is one of our counterparts one of the trainees the first training course in the world conducted by Erie training team in overseas in Cambodia that was in Cambodia I was selected to be a trainee on the right production it's about the right production Cambodia I learned from that very quick so after the training course they selected me as a trainer for the next training courses on rice production in 1995 I've been in Erie for my first Erie training course only one I have only one Erie training training course at Erie we call GEU genetic evaluation and utilization I was very happy during that course even three months but I learned a lot I learned a lot and everywhere I can go because I know Erie people by that time when I come back that I continues as a right reader by training at CIAP so in 1998 it was successfully getting scholarship and I was studying in University of Queensland when when we went in in January 86 the production in the country was around two million tons the average yield was just over one tonne per hectare and I look at it today what is it almost 30 years later right total production in the country is is around nine million tons all right the country is an exporter again in fact for the last several years the country has been exporting somewhere around 800 thousand to a little over a million tons per year they've really developed their export of rice as a source of income Cambodia itself is a great credit to Erie and I think initially the vision of our director general Dr. Swaminathan and consistent long-term partnership with with that country through thick and thin challenges of funding for the most part Australia was the was the big supporter but we were able over the years to diversify that level of support and one of the key successes is we've been able to connect Cambodian scientists with scientists in other countries we always wanted that we didn't we didn't want them to be dependent only on Erie first is Erie had to provide more scientific and information to us very useful for us to use that translate it to explain it to our policymaker for them to consider and setting up policy framework objective for the future currently the technologies that Erie developed should be providing to the nurse and and and and have you know to create environment to nurse to be getting more and more responsible for that involvement you know the last one but not least the sporting in research capacity in rice improvement from Erie is a vital need Erie could not neglect it on that it has to strengthen in that