The 1969 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding

Distilling more than three millenia of accumulated insight in cultivating man's leading cereal crop, the INTERNATIONAL RICE RESEARCH INSTITUTE, with its creation of "miracle rice," inaugurated a "green revolution," promising nearly one-half of humanity the prospect of suffficiency in its staple food.

Great scientific accomplishments are rarely the product of chance or lonely research. Rather, they result from mustering all available knowledge to focus inquiry upon the critical frontiers of needed advance.

While science over the past 150 years made great strides in temperate agriculture, advances in the tropics were slow. Specialty crops like tea, sugar and rubber received first attention. Failure substantially to expand yields of staple, tropical food crops crippled progress, especially in many new nations where populations burgeoned.

IRRI at Los Baños was the first coordinated international attempt in the tropics to solve a major problem of world agriculture. Funded by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations in agreement with the Philippine Government, the Institute has a multinational Board of Trustees. Likewise, IRRI's staff under its director, Dr. Robert F. Chandler, Jr., is international. Enlisted are the talents of Chinese, Filipinos, Americans, Indians, Japanese, Thais, Ceylonese, Pakistanis and a Brazilian.

Since research began at IRRI in 1962, accomplishments have affected every aspect of rice culture. Most consequential is the new plant type of rice designed for the tropics; with narrow, upright leaves, and short, stiff straws, it is responsive to nitrogen without lodging. Unlike most former tropical varieties, the new rice types are non-photosensitive and can be planted at any season in many countries. Plant breeders now seek to add greater resistance to disease and pests. Almost as important have been IRRI's developments in cultural methods, including use of systemic insecticides, herbicides and improved planting and water control.

In true scientific tradition, IRRI built upon earlier rice research, particularly from Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia and the United States. Its germplasm bank now holds a world collection of some 10,000 varieties of rice available to breeders everywhere. In its library are all known technical publications of consequence on rice, often translated from other languages into English. Engaged in research or studying production technology have been 351 scholars, fellows and trainees from 14 Asian countries, from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the United States. Concentrating these human and material resources on a single crop has spurred fruitful collaboration between rice specialists around the globe.

New varieties of rice released by IRRI, beginning with IR-8, became catalysts. Other research agencies were encouraged to distribute their new varieties for comparative trials. When rice farming became attractively profitable for tropical cultivators, governments mobilized resources in massive campaigns for national rice self-sufficiency. Discovering that such efforts to use new varieties and technology often required "changing the agents of change," IRRI instituted training for extension men to match learning in the lecture hall and laboratory with actual plowing, planting and weeding in the paddy field.

In the rice revolution that IRRI is fostering, both farmers and scientists are changing. Converging periodically from around the world upon the Institute, scientists have moved beyond concern with professional recognition to measuring accomplishment in farmers' use of their findings.

In electing the INTERNATIONAL RICE RESEARCH INSTITUTE to receive the 1969 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes seven years of innovative, interdisciplinary teamwork by Asian and Western scientists, unprecedented in scope, that is achieving radical, rapid advances in rice culture.