The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is a nonprofit agricultural research and training center established to improve the well-being of present and future generations of rice farmers and consumers, particularly those with low incomes. It is dedicated to helping farmers in developing countries produce more food on limited land using less water, less labor, and fewer chemical inputs, without harming the environment. IRRI is a Future Harvest center supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
Because rice grows in a large variety of environments stretching across the tropics and sub-tropics, it is important to understand different biophysical conditions and socio-economic circumstances under which rice is cultivated in order to identify the research priorities and appropriate interventions for sustainable rice production. To achieve this better understanding, scientists at IRRI use geographical information science to provide an explicit spatial dimension in addressing a range of rice research problems including germplasm biodiversity, crop management and livelihood & environmental studies.
GIS applications developed at IRRI range in spatial scales
and complexity. The digital mapping capability of GIS is used to establish
electronic atlases of rice statistics at national and sub-national level,
wild rice species distribution and rice germplasm evaluation trials. Remote
sensing and geographic information analysis are used to delineate the
extents of rice sub-ecosystems in India, to determine the extent and severity
of drought risk for rainfed rice in South and Southeast Asia, and to analyze
the effects of rapid changes in rice-based cropping systems in the uplands
and in the delta areas in Vietnam on farmer livelihoods.
GIS is increasingly used in conjunction with other modeling tools to address more complex problems related to rice and agricultural development. A Rice Supply and Demand Analysis (RSDA) system was developed within a GIS environment to strengthen the biophysical basis of estimating rice supply at sub-national level for Vietnam and Malaysia, and is being applied for the Philippines. A GIS-based Land Use Analysis and Planning System (LUPAS) was developed under the SysNet project to explore trade-offs between different rural development objectives subjected to various resource constraints. LUPAS has been applied to various locations in five Asian countries and is being adopted by the Vietnamese government as a decision support tool for land use planning at district level. GIS coupled with hydraulic modeling is being used to assist provincial authorities in the coastal district in the Mekong River Delta to determine water control operations that would accommodate the needs of shrimp farmers for saline water in the dry season and of rice farmers for fresh water in the wet season.
IRRI also provides training and technical assistance to
NARES collaborating institutions in many Asian countries in capacity building
and applications development using geographical information science.