One of every three persons on earth depends on rice for more than half of his or her daily food. Ninety percent of the world's rice is grown and consumed in Asia,where more than half the world's people and about two-thirds of the world's poor live.
Rice is also an important staple in Latin America and Africa.
IRRI was established to help farmers in developing countries grow more rice on limited land with less water, less labor, and less chemical inputs, and to do so without harming the environment. BACK TO TOP IRRI developed the first semidwarf breeding lines for rice in the mid-1960s. The high yields and rapid farmer adoption of the new grain varieties triggered the Green Revolution. National agricultural programs worked in cooperation with IRRI to intensify rice production. The IRRI rices were soon followed by dozens, then hundreds, of semidwarfs developed by scientists in national programs.