An adventure in applied science - IRRI books - International Rice ...

Early research and training results 107removed. From that F 3 generation, 298 of the best individual plants wereselected and seed from each was sown separately in the blast disease nursery,thus giving 298 pedigree rows to produce the F 4 seed. Again, the blastsusceptibleseedlings were discarded.From row 288, a single plant (number 3) was selected and, in accordancewith IRRI’s numbering system, was designated as IR8-288-3. Seed from thissingle plant was grown as a fifth generation in a pedigree row to produce thebasic seed stock of IR8-288-3 (sixth generation), which was sown for multiplicationpurposes only, without further selection at that time. The seed wasuniform enough for trials in other countries, but a couple of years later,Beachell devoted considerable effort to producing an extremely pure strainthat would serve as a uniform seed source of IR8 for the future.Multiplication of seed stock for distribution to other countries for testingtook place in early 1965 and the crop was harvested in time to be planted at thebeginning of the wet season in late June or early July. Of course, many othervarieties or genetic lines were included in the seed lots sent out to other riceexperiment stations. These first cooperative trials were conducted by plantbreeders in Hongkong, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and Taiwan. It isto be noted that India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka had not yet shown much interestin testing IRRI materials. However, that was soon to change.Included in that early group of varieties and lines were ponlais fromTaiwan, some japonica-indica crosses that Beachell had developed in Texas,and, of course, some of the progeny from crosses between short-staturedindicas from Taiwan and tall tropical varieties.The ponlais from Taiwan proved to be low yielding because they were lowtillering and highly susceptible to viral diseases. For similar reasons, the U.S.selections did not do well. In all tests, consistently high yields were obtainedfrom the crosses between Taiwan semidwarf indicas and tall tropical varieties,with IR9-60 (a cross between Peta and I-geo-tse) and IR8-288-3 often leadingthe list. Results in IRRI yield trials were similar.In late 1965 and early 1966, Beachell made up a group of 303 varieties andgenetic lines that showed promise in IRRI trials as varieties to be used directlyor as parents to be crossed with local varieties. To be sure that this collectionreceived proper attention, it was sent only to those countries where aRockefeller or Ford Foundation representative was in residence: Colombia,India, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), Malaysia, and Thailand. In addition,300 breeding lines were sent to rice scientists in Mexico, Costa Rica, DominicanRepublic, Taiwan, and the U.S. Upon request, smaller sets of breeding materialswere supplied to agricultural experiment stations in Australia, Brazil,Cambodia, Ceylon, Central African Republic, Dahomey, Egypt, El Salvador,Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran, Japan,Laos, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Republic of theCongo, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Spain, Sudan, and the islandof Timor. All together, 6,000 seed packets of IRRI breeding lines were sent out.Hence, 1966 marked the year when the worldwide distribution of IRRI’stesting and breeding materials became a sizable operation.