The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that renewable energy sources account for about 13% of the world’s total primary energy supply. Nearly 80% of these renewables are in the form of combustible biomass—mostly wood, charcoal, crop residues, or other wastes burned for cooking, heating, and other activities in the developing world. Now, high oil prices and...

This issue’s Rice facts presents some key information on the rice situation in Asia and selected rice-producing countries in sub-Saharan Africa—where...

Farmers inspect a seed drill at a Central Soil Salinity Research Institute field day in October 2005 at the institute headquarters in Karnal, Haryana....

Vicky Ntetema, BBC Bureau Chief in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, interviews a Tanzanian rice farmer during the Africa Rice Congress. (Photo: IRRI) Rice was...

A common question but very difficult to answer. Depending on your definition of variety, the answer could be anything from zero to around 500,000 varieties of Oryza sativa (Asian cultivated rice). In the technical sense used by taxonomists (biologists who classify organisms into groups based on evolutionary relationships), descriptions have been published of 14 varieties,...

The Alarm project will help researchers predict how climate change will affect rice-growing regions such as this area along the Magat River, which separates...

The author (left) with former Viet Cong political officer Tran Van Rang on the Xa No Canal in the lower Mekong Delta in 1988. Rang has just explained why...

Examining IR8 in the Institute fields in August 1967 are IRRI breeder Hank Beachell (crouching), visiting philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III (left),...

MR. KIM is the administrator of Korea’s Rural Development Administration The Rural Development Administration (RDA), which celebrated its 100th anniversary...

(Photo: Ariel Javellana) At least 840 million people worldwide do not have enough food to meet their daily energy needs. In addition, more than three...