Did you know that rice grows up to 12ft tall...

Warning the contents below is a little geeky so read with caution if you are not into plant science....but you might learn something!

We visited the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Banos, Phillippines and got the low-down on rice generally and the work they are doing there.  Rice is not something I knew much about until today.

I learnt a couple of useful facts that are well worth dropping into the odd conversation.  Such as at IRRI there are over 110,000 strains of rice in the seed bank

; there are two other seed banks globally which store 500 grams of seed in each; there is aerobic and anaerobic grown rice; a new strain of rice has been developed which contains vitamin A, the second largest mineral deficiency amongst children in the developing world, the greatest mineral deficiency is iron for which they are currently working on a strain of rice which supplies that

; they have long running trials (50 years continious cropping) which show a surprisingly little yield drop with no fertiliser application - yield approx 60% of fertilised plots

; some strains of rice can grow up to 12ft tall which are then harvested by boat.

We visited the Genebank, the Genetic Transformation laboratory and the Molecular Marker Applications Laboratory, the Rice Museum and the C4 rice plant growth facilties.

A couple of things struck me as really significant in the area of the rice plant breeding progamme, the development of flood tolerant rice, iron rich rice and on the horizon is the development of a C4 strain of rice (rice is currently C3).  I am not going to give  plant science lecture on the difference between C4 and C3 plants other than to say as a C4 rice plant it will be hugely more productive; photosynthesis will increase by 100%, it will be 1.5 - 3 x more water efficient, nitrogen use efficiency will increase by 260% and yield will increase by 50%.  It will be nothing short of transformational so if you want to unserstand C3/C4 stuff better do a Google search on it and stun your friends at dinner parties.