 Welcome to today's seminar. My name's Liz Humphries from the Waterscience Group and it's my pleasure to introduce Roland Murech today, who's my neighbour from just down the corridor in the Soils Group, but we've actually got a lot more in common than what that sounds. Roland's kindly provided a very short introduction about himself, PhD in marine sciences, sounds highly appropriate. The group that he was with were experts in waterlogged soils, especially in nutrient transformations in waterlogged soils. So he started off in something a little bit salty, but then he quickly moved to other waterlogged soils, namely in rice ecosystem. So he's been for much of his career, except for a few years in Kenya where I think it was maize, is that right? And thinking about preparing for introducing Roland today brought like a flood of memories for me. I first heard of him in the mid-1980s. I was doing my PhD on nitrogen transformations in rice systems in Australia and doing my literature review. So Roland was then one of the gurus in nitrogen in rice, and so this was, what's this, 30 years later? So he's probably learned a bit more since then. After his PhD and doing that first stint at Erie, he was actually working for the International Fertiliser Development Centre, which is also in Alabama, USA. And so I've crossed paths with many of his colleagues from there over the years. One of them examined my thesis, another one I worked with Dunwoord Godwin in crop modelling and eupendrosine. Yeah, so lots of memories there for me too, Roland, in thinking about introducing you. I believe that Roland is one of our eminent scientists at Erie. He's got a publication record awfully long. And he's got some prestigious awards including the Norman Ballard Award from the International Fertiliser Industry, which was connected with nutrient management in rice and the work that he did taking the learning from SSNM into the development of user-friendly tools for small holder farmers. So with that I'd like to introduce Roland Burish. Let's give him a warm-up. Thank you, Liz. I should also mention as I start that there are a series of publications from a dry-seeded delayed flood rice from Australia in the mid-1980s that I've been citing for quite a number of years or several decades by Humphreys at all. So that citing of each other's literature goes back and forth. So good afternoon. I'd like today to introduce you to rice crop manager and discuss some of the future possibilities with it. And as I start and think about this, I'm conscious of the fact that much is expected of us as scientists. That is to publish quality research, to train, to develop products for impact, and to deploy. Or ensure those products are deployed for impact. And they could be seed, they could be methodologies, they could be crop and resource management practices. Now how we distribute our time between those different activities and expectations can depend upon our career goals and the expectation of investors. But certainly I see that one of the things that we're challenged with as scientists is to simultaneously handle both the quality research and the product deployment. So what I would like to see today is whether I can help to illustrate how we can be helpful in making scientists more successful. And that is by establishing a cross-discipline conduit for facilitating large-scale deployment of research products. In that, we would like to be able for scientists to contribute their research products into this conduit. For there could be predetermined scientific principles that dictate the targeting of these products. And what I'm talking about here is not something new. This is something that's been going on with networks and consortium for decades. What I've highlighted here in blue in this second point is perhaps something that can be strengthened from those experiences in the past. And that strengthening can be in this predetermined scientific principles that dictate the targeting. We're also interested in products that could be incorporated into extension activities of the public and private and advisory services. And for scientists to receive quantifiable evidence of dissemination of their research products. And I also highlight here quantifiable evidence of dissemination. Because that may be another area that we can particularly contribute to helping scientists. So the objective of this seminar is to present an ICT-based conduit for facilitating large-scale deployment of crop and resource management practices. Recognizing the crop and resource management practices presents some challenges as compared to the deployment of seed technology. So I would like to try and explain how we can tailor the principles of precision farming through farming in small land holdings. The news recent advances in ICT and to partner with research and extension-based organizations in this activity. Now I've started in this in the way I've started in many presentations before. And that is to highlight how small land holdings are associated with high spatial and temporal variations. Those are variations from field to field and from farmer to farmer. And such variations that are common include crop management, soil fertility, the financial resources of people, the access of farmers to new technologies. But one of the things that we're aiming and striving to do is to optimize those management practices to match the location-specific needs of the crop and the farmer in a diverse environment such as shown in this picture. And when we think about that need and that goal, that's really very similar to what is being targeted in precision farming. Precision farming aims to optimize the management to match location-specific needs. It has really three particular steps. First, there's an observation to obtain location-specific information. There's calculation to determine that location-specific actionable management practice and then to respond with an action. Just looking at this picture here for example of this tractor which is using variable rate technology. There's a sensor on this tractor that is doing the observation. He is observing the crop and from that observation the information is being fed into a computer within that tractor that is calculating a location-specific actionable practice which is then being implemented in response to that through the way the spreader is adjusting the fertilizer rates. What we would like to see is how we can adapt and implement precision farming like this in small land holdings that would be predominant across rice in Asia. So here are these three goals again within precision farming. And now this is an example of how this could be potentially tailored to small land holdings. First of all, the observation and the obtaining of information could be through an interview with a farmer. That information that's needed about that specific field condition could be obtained by interviewing the farmer. Secondly, that calculation could be done with a decision support tool as is often used in precision farming. And finally, that actionable advice rather than being an advice that's driving the machine could be advice that is actually being presented to a farmer so the farmer can implement the practice. And that could be using then some of the power of ICT. Some of the components that we need in implementing this would be the science-based principles for optimizing the return on investment at the field level. And that's really how to develop those science-based principles for selecting the field-specific best management practices. What are those principles and how do we use them to actually optimize in a highly variable environment? And then to use the accessibility to recent developments in ICT to help implement this. We start with fertilizer because as shown in the graph here, fertilizer can be a substantial input cost for farmers. Usually the most important input cost after labor. This initial focus on fertilizer then also seems additionally justified because farmers are often not applying fertilizer in an efficient fashion. Particularly not timing it properly or not adjusting the rates or the source accordingly. Now we go back to the mid-1990s with the start of a project entitled Reversing Trends in Declining Productivity. That was a activity that cut across a number of countries starting with these five locations from about 1995. That project was set up to develop science-specific nutrient management, SS&M, which now provides those principles that can be adapted to precision farming in small land holdings. That partnership extended for a number of years and this shows the extent of the partnership ten years later in 2005. There were a number of publications that were derived from this research. But in that remained the challenge of how to take this at a large scale to farmers. The science was there and that science provided the principles for field-specific management that could be incorporated into a precision farming context. But yet there was a need to get this to large numbers. So Erie with the NARS developed nutrient manager for rice to provide rice farmers with precise fertilizer management. They used those scientific principles and provided a customized recommendation for a specific field through a mobile phone or computer. And it aimed right from the beginning to make a wise investment for the farmer at the start of the season. An investment that would increase the income of the farmer by at least a hundred US dollars per hectare per crop. Starting with a product that was released in the Philippines through the national programs, then another released in Indonesia and in Bangladesh. A considerable amount of data were collected to look at the performance of the recommendation coming from nutrient manager. Here is an example of the net benefits derived from a series of experiments in farmer's fields across those three countries. In the Philippines of 73 trials, and you could see a large number of trials of outside Java in Indonesia and across the two main seasons in Bangladesh. There was generally an increase in yield and that increase in yield with the nutrient manager recommendation corresponded to an increase in added net benefits that usually obtained the target of a hundred US dollars or more. So that provided the information that was needed to ensure and enable the verification and endorsement of the product with national programs. In addition, the way this is set up, it provides the opportunity to monitor in real time the use of the recommendations that are being sent out to farmers. Here is the nutrient manager for rice recommendations that were generated in the Philippines over a period of nearly two years. So there were over 22,000 recommendations that were generated. They're cleaned a bit by removing the recommendations generated from eerie. But still there are a number of repeats, a number of cases where people in the region were just playing with it. So we needed in this database to have a way of filtering out those recommendations that really were not going to farmers, that were people just training or becoming familiar with it. So this is the best to our knowledge filtering at the time and we have now subsequently developed better mechanisms of filtering out the testing of the app as compared to the actual recommendations that are going to farmers. So we can estimate that over 11,000 recommendations are actually put in the hands of farmers. This doesn't say what the farmers did with those recommendations, but at least we have an opportunity in real time to track those recommendations to go down to the municipality level to where those recommendations are being given out to farmers. Here just an example of how that's divided amongst the regions. Now the users of the nutrient manager were interested at this point really in more than in nutrient management. Farmers really want more advice than just nutrient management advice. So the nutrient manager was pressed from the beginning to really be enhanced to provide crop management advice. And that led to the upgrading of nutrient manager as the rice crop manager. That rice crop manager was officially released through the national programs in the Philippines and in Bangladesh in November of last year. That would be through the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute in Bangladesh and through Phil Rice here in the Philippines. You can see the URLs for these apps. They have replaced the nutrient manager. The nutrient manager no longer exists in these countries. In Indonesia, an upgrade of the nutrient manager to the rice crop manager is expected very soon. Now the way the crop manager works is that it builds upon the nutrient manager and nutrient management recommendations. We recognize that there is a yield gap between the yield that's attainable with optimal management and the current yield in farmer's fields. We're very aware of the yield gap. That's something that's being investigated through a number of projects. That's something that is intrigued and interested researchers for decades. The challenge is how to close that yield gap in a fashion that is attractive and financially attractive to farmers. And nutrient management provides a particular avenue that is potentially attractive here because fertilizers are costly and often used inefficiently. So an improvement in nutrient management can often mean an opportunity for financial returns to the farmer. The challenge is that farmers are usually rather hesitant to take up nutrient management recommendations. They're usually one of the last things taken up among technology options to farmers. But if those options are taken up, the benefits can be large. We aim to ensure that initial benefit to attract the farmer and then to that add the other technologies because some of the other technologies that we have may not be as financially attractive but they could be resource conserving or have other benefits. So we can just add them to the nutrient management and they can continue to benefit the farmer in additional fashions. And that is what the crop manager is trying to do. That actually means that we put less pressure on other management technologies to be successful in every farmer's fields. We're basically hoping here that nutrient management will be successful in every farmer's field and entice that farmer to the application and then others can come on board but they don't have to always be successful in every farmer's field. Now the way the operation of crop manager works is that we go back to precision farming and the first step is to observe, to obtain field level information from the farmer. This can be done now offline without an internet connection by a smartphone or a personal computer. That information is then through an internet connection transmitted to a cloud based server to determine the management practices that are specific to that location. And that is done by interfacing the crop manager model with databases and that model includes a nutrient management calculator as well as a decision making calculator for the best bet crop management for that field. The databases can start with varietal databases, soils databases, yield databases, climate and location specific, management specific, yield targeting, and they can just grow with time. And then the third step is to respond by providing actionable advice to the farmer. Now when we take them step by step, here in this figure, you can see the template for the rice wheat crop manager for Beehar and Eastern UP. And that's a list of questions and the intent is not for the farmer to directly use this application but rather for an extension worker, a crop advisor or a service provider to interview the farmer. We don't anticipate that farmers are going to have that computer or smartphone but we anticipate there will be an extension service that can interact with that farmer. The questions relate to the location, the variety, the field size because we would like to make a recommendation that's based on the specific area of the farmer's field. Sowing and planting date, past yields, site characteristics that include soils and landscape position, things that will influence the optimal management and soil fertility of the location. Residue management is very important in terms of nutrient balances and nutrient management. Irrigation use is important in terms of yield targeting, can also be important in terms of understanding whether water saving technologies could also be incorporated. The second step after that interview is then to connect to the internet and to transmit this information to the cloud-based server where the calculations take place. And the databases can be accessed and those databases can be updated in real time when a new variety is released. If there's a pest problem in a location, that information can go in immediately and be instantaneously available to every future user. The third step is to provide that actionable advice. And that advice, what you see here on the side is the crop manager for Bangladesh which is really the nutrient manager plus the best bet of bearing recommendations. And they include the nutrient management component from the nutrient manager, the sources, the rates, the timing. But also crop establishment guidelines in terms of seedling age, seed source, rates, nursery management, sowing dates, variety selection, weed management, insect management, and evolving towards irrigation recommendations as well as variety specific recommendations. This here gives now an example of what is the use then for the rice crop manager for the Philippines in its first months of use. And it's rather relatively modest. There's only about 2,000 uses. We know specifically down to the municipality where these recommendations are going out to farmers. Now I'd like to give you some examples of how the partnerships are working across different countries. I'm going to start with Bangladesh. I just returned yesterday from Bangladesh. And there the rice crop manager has been released nationwide in November by the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute. It combines the nutrient management recommendations with the Biri recommendations on crop production and puts them into the context of field specific management. Biri has formed an 18-member RCM team to handle the training, research, and deployment nationwide. That team includes the members from the nine Biri regional stations as well as nine scientists across disciplines at the headquarters. The collaboration on rice crop manager entails the involvement of Biri, which maintains and upgrades the rice crop manager and provides technical and ICT expertise. Biri provides the technical expertise and content for the extension service and very importantly provides the training to the extension service. The Department of Agricultural Extension helps in field testing evaluation and provides the extension. Now our vision of this when we started was that we would move from the situation here where there were just a group of farmers talking to an extension worker, to a situation as you see on the side here on the right where an extension worker is actually interviewing a farmer with a mobile device and getting a recommendation. So we would assist extension workers to provide more personal, more precise and personalized information to farmers. But what we're finding, it's not just unique to Bangladesh, is that Department of Agriculture Extension workers do not have computers and they do not have mobile devices. This has been quite a surprise to me. I spent these years working on ICT only to discover the devices are not in the field. So what are we going to do? One of the things that we have done in Bangladesh that appears to be an initial successful step and a transition step until those extension workers get those devices is that we have linked the Department of Extension, the DAE field staff with Union Information Service Center staff. There are 4,500 Union Information Service Centers around the country that have computers and printers that are being operated by young entrepreneurs. What is taking place at this point is that Department of Agricultural Extension staff interview farmers with RCM questions and submit that information to the computer operators who enter the information and develop the recommendation, provide the recommendation back to the DAE staff who provide it to farmers. Now this will make IT people cringe in terms of how inefficient this is, but that's the best we can do. And we recognize that it's a start and we're in an evolution, we're in the early days. Now this is the feedback from the meeting two days ago with the Department of Agricultural Extension leaders and this is the feedback we got. They said that more agricultural apps are needed. There aren't enough for us to really go forth to the ministry and justify asking the ministry for mobile apps in the hands of the 10,000 plus extension workers. So that's really a challenge, I think, for scientists to develop applications that can be made available to help justify getting those devices in the hands of extension. Another feedback not unexpected is that they find a number of questions in the crop manager to be rather long, and that will be a challenge for scientists to reduce without reducing the quality. So BEERY DAE and HEERY have agreed to a pilot study to obtain more information on RCM operation and performance with the results being used in a request to the ministry for support to BEERY and DAE for large-scale dissemination of RCM. And as we anticipated, it will only be a matter of time until that needed support for devices to the extension workers take place. Now the collaboration in India is a partnership with SIMIT through CESA, and it's involving field testing of beta versions of the Rice Week crop manager in BEERY and Eastern UP, AMAZE crop manager in Bangladesh, and Rice in addition. In addition to that, a new product will be AMAZE crop manager in BEERY and Eastern UP that's under development. The collaboration in India is also initiating the development and field testing of a rice crop manager for stress tolerant rice. This is through the ERIS project with the improving rice-based rain-fed agricultural systems in BEERY, the Gates funded project through Catholic Relief Services. And the aim here is to match the field-specific best management practice for its drought and submergent tolerant rice and to deploy these location-specific crop and nutrient management practices with CEDE. Now at this stage, the focus has really been on building the collaboration in testing and endorsing through national partners. The aim is to get the state endorsement of crop manager so that it can be released statewide as a state recommendation. This will probably take several years. So at this point, we're going around with a team of scientists from CESA and ERIS to the various universities. This took place several weeks ago. Dr. Malik is there, Varender, Dr. Ashok Yodov from ERIS working with CEDANSHAL. And these are the three universities we visited. They have seminars and it has worked on strengthening the collaboration of the projects with those universities. In Vietnam and Indonesia, the rice crop managers are under development. In Indonesia, a particularly strong focus is being placed on rain-fed conditions. Tidal swamps are also being entered in into the future. And we're also working on partnerships with the private sector in both of those countries. Now the testing and upgrading of rice crop managers ongoing in the Philippines, where Erie is maintaining and upgrading...