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

An international institute for rice research 41Clearing coconut treesfrom land that waspurchased to provideextra area for theexperimental field (late1960).example, each piece of concrete pipe for the underground irrigation systemwas pressure tested for leaks.The total cost of developing the experimental field was about $250,000.By mid-1961, IRRI had a large area planted to rice, much of it devoted togrowing pure seed for the Bureau of Plant Industry. Besides giving certainIRRI staff members (not excluding the director and assistant director!) anopportunity to observe the growing of rice at first hand, those early plantingshelped in determining the variability in the newly leveled experimental plots.Although much of the work was completed by mid-1961, minor refinementsin the land development and the solving of early production problemsin the paddies took most of Johnson’s and Ramos’ time for all of 1961 and 1962.It was 1963 before Johnson could start his research on machinery design,studies of land preparation, and other experiments.Additional buildings. The buildings described so far include all that were inthe original plan and that were completed by January 1962. However, several