The Rockefeller Foundation's International program on rice biotechnology

摘要

The Rockefeller Foundation's design of a long-term program on rice biotechnology was the product of a 2-year intensive survey and analysis of the genetic prospects for the world's major food crops conducted in the early 1980s. In late 1984, the Foundation's Board of Trustees approved a strategy for a 10- 15-year program. That program was highly speculative and indicated substantial risk with regard to the status at that time of cereal plant molecular biology and rice in particular. During the first5-7 years, projects supported by the Foundation laid the scientific basis for "rice biotechnology" as we know it today. Early successes were the first DNA molecular marker map of rice, the regeneration and transformation of rice, the use of rice pest genomic information to unravel age-old riddles of host-plant resistance, and numerous other discoveries that changed the way rice geneticists viewed breeding objectives such as insect resistance, abiotic stress tolerance, and hybrid rice. These discoveriesculminated in the revelation of rice's pivotal genomic position in the evolution of cereal species. Over the ensuing 7-8 years, the program shifted its focus to the transfer of the resulting biotechnologies to institutions in rice- producing and -consuming countries. This task required the strengthening of both physical and human resources in cooperation with national and international rice research systems in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The Foundation's program management sought to support further technology generation and application while promoting the program's greatest asset, international collaborative research-cum-training. This "win-win" component of the program linking fledgling national rice biotechnology efforts directly to advanced research institutes in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia became the hallmark of the Foundation's management strategy. During the program's 17-year life- time, more than 400 (primarily Asian) rice scientists were trained in this manner. The successful linkage of research in cutting-edge biotechnology with the training of rice scientists often produced long-term collaborative relationships that outgrew dependence on Foundation support and continue today (such as the IRRI-managed Asian Rice Biotechnology Network). Some of these successes were undoubtedly a consequence of the basic research progress in rice plant molecular genomics, which brought greater financial support for rice-centered research as rice became the "model cereal" for genomicresearch, rivaling even Arabidopsis.