"Scuba rice" - adron.sr

1rice sciencein theDIGITAL AGEby Henry Sackville HamiltonIRRI books move from dusty shelves to thevirtual library. Need a book? Google it!231. RICE TODAY at Mt. Pinatubo,Philippines: (frontrow, left to right) VivaySalazar, Mary Burac, ShielaQuilloy-Mercado, TintinDoctolero, and EJ Azucena;(back row, left to right)Denis Diaz, Yohei Koide,Icoy Mercado, DarleneSanchez, Pogs Manalili,Tanguy Lafarge, and EdselMoscoso.2. Calvin, Victoria,and Craig, children ofDavid and Mariju Dawe,pose with Rice Today atNapapiiri Arctic Circle,Rovaniemi, Finland.3. MIA AUREUS, Rice Todayeditor, takes the magazineto Chinatown, Singapore.From its huge volume ofresearch results on riceand rice-related subjectmatter, the InternationalRice Research Institute (IRRI)has, for nearly 50 years, generatedand disseminated knowledge andtechnology as public goods to ricefarmers via its partners in thedeveloping and developed world.Since 1962 (when IRRI beganpublishing), the Institute hasproduced some 500 scientific titlesencompassing around 100,000printed pages, in the form ofmonographs, workshop proceedings,field guides, and manuals. “Thesebooks have always been distributedfor free or at minimal cost to ourpartners in the developing countriesprimarily through their institutionallibraries,” says Gene Hettel, headof IRRI’s Communication andPublications Services (CPS). “Manytitles are published solely by IRRI;some are copublished with reputablescience publishers, such as WorldScientific, Elsevier, Wiley, Kluwer,CABI, and others.”For a time during the 1980s intothe 1990s, IRRI was undoubtedly thelargest publisher of scientific booksin the Philippines, according to TomHargrove, CPS head during thosedays and most recently coordinator ofthe Information and CommunicationsUnit at the International Centerfor Soil Fertility and AgriculturalDevelopment in Muscle Shoals,Alabama, USA. “We published 18to 25 books annually back then,” hesays. “By 1990, at least 130 editionsof 33 books (particularly field guidesand manuals) had been publishedby collaborating publishers in 29countries and in 42 languages. Thelinchpin among these, A Farmer’sPrimer on Growing Rice (42languages including 10 Philippinedialects), was easily the world’s mostwidely published agricultural book.”A popular field guide in thisimpressive family of extension-typepublications, Friends of the RiceFarmer: Helpful Insects, Spiders, andPathogens, just had its tenth printingin English in March 2009, thrustingthe total number of copies past the100,000 mark when adding 25 non-English editions in Khmer, Burmese,Vietnamese, Tagalog, Tamil, Nepali,and others.Although the number of IRRIproducedtitles has tapered offsomewhat in recent years due to12Rice Today April-June 2009Rice Today April-June 2009 13