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Erle Frayne Argonza
Hello Fellow Earthans! Hello world! Welcome 2009, the Year of the Ox!
This economist, sociologist and self-development guru has been hibernating for awhile as part of a year-starter contemplation period. I’m now formally ending this hibernation, and will resume sharing my thoughts about world events and wisdom.
The holiday season is surely a period of excitement and fast-moving events comprising of parties, reunions, and chows. Like everyone else, I was swept away by the enchantment of this unique period, and ended the year with over 10 pounds of extra weight.
In January 1-4 I took some time out to visit the Sabang Beach of Puerto Galera, Mindoro. An excellent place for scuba diving, this spot is just contiguous to two (2) other wonderful sites, the La Laguna Beach and Coco Beach. I spent the tour with my cousin Evadne Argonza-Bautista and her other half, Rudy Bautista, chief engineer and overseas seafarer, who brought along their two starseed kids Raissa and Randoll. I also had a reunion in the beach with my cousin Ricky Argonza, a master scuba diver, who manages the Garden of Edens resort (German-owned).
I was just about to begin orienting myself to the new year, by detailing my annual battle plan (goals) and burning the excess fats gained from the holidays, when my Dad’s 2nd wife (Lorna Argonza) suddenly died last January 15 while travelling back by bus Manila. Being the only son of Dad (Steve Argonza) who’s here in Manila (all of my sibs are in the USA), I had to conduct my filial duties and be the burial event organizer-operator for my old man. The lady, Tita Lorna, was finally buried last 20th of the month. The day after, the 21st, saw me hit by allergic rhinitis, a recurring ailment, after all the stressful though preparations for the burial.
Still nursing my rhinitis, I finally am finding the time to catch up on my goal-refinements, fat burning gym sessions, and reflections about global events. The year opened up with Gaza (a spill over from late 2008), the pessimistic facet, and the installation of Barack Obama as US president, the optimistic facet. We will all be watching the aftermath of these two events for sure, as they contribute to the shape of 2009 as a whole.
We’re also preparing for the celebration of the start of the Year of the Ox, which is a legacy of the Chinese culture. I’ve already bought new crystal materials for balancing my home, and an ox figurine for my work room & study. A positive year this will be in terms of bountiness, as the underlying Tao philosophy of the celebrations so explain.
Well, Fellows, let’s hope for the better for 2009 in terms of moving out of the economic and politico-economy cul de sacs that our planet has been seemingly entrapped into. Welcome the Ox Year with a Big Bang!
[24 January 2009, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Erle Frayne Argonza
Gracious day to everyone!
From China comes a news item highlighting the gap between technology innovations and the business community. The observation is that the gap is a yawning one. This gap has been observed among other Asians that proceeded with the industrialization development track couples of decades back.
The new is contained below.
[Writ 07 October 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
Chinese innovation ‘too isolated’
Jia Hepeng
23 September 2008 | EN | 中文
Flickr/Pere Tubert Juhe
[ZHENGZHOU AND BEIJING] For China to become a world leader in innovation, it should address regional differences and promote corporate input, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The report, released this month (11 September), acknowledges that with spending on research and development (R&D) matching that of Germany, China is already a global player in science and technology.
But the country lags in innovation capability and performance compared to OECD countries with a similar level of R&D investment, although China ranked second in global publications levels in 2006.
According to the report, China’s innovation system is not fully developed and inadequately integrated. It describes the system as an “archipelago”, a large number of “innovative islands” with insufficient links between them.
Current regional patterns of R&D and innovation create too great a physical separation between knowledge producers and potential users, the authors say.
In addition, although foreign investment in China has increasingly contributed to innovation, the domestic business sector has been slow to make productive use of accumulated R&D investment, human resources for science and technology, and related infrastructure, the report indicates.
The Chinese government is looking to address this. For example, a recent study found that of 22 Chinese biotechnology firms investigated, all had received government funding (see Regulations ‘hinder’ China biotech investment).
But besides funding companies directly, “it is important for China to improve the framework conditions for innovation, which will contribute to building an innovation culture and provide the conditions and incentives for firms to shift their attention to innovation,” Gang Zhang of the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry and one of the report’s authors, told SciDev.Net.
And Feng Jun, president of Beijing Huaqi Information Digital Technology, a leading Chinese technology company, says the government has distributed its funding too evenly among companies, instead of focusing on a few to gain key breakthroughs.
Link to the executive summary of OECD report
Erle Frayne Argonza
Good morning from Manila!
It seems the excitement in Iraq’s S&T is moving to higher pitches, despite the noise and flames of the ensuing war there. The policy environment is getting to be more definitive, and a new state institution is being installed to address S&T research and development needs of the country.
See the exciting news below.
[Writ 06 October 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
New authority and law to push Iraqi research
Wagdy Sawahel
26 September 2008 | EN | 中文
Flickr/rxwarren
Iraq is to establish a scientific research authority (SRA) to promote science and technology research and improve science policy, and will consider a new law offering scientists significant financial benefits.
The SRA was announced by Abd Dhiab al-Ajili, the Iraqi minister for higher education and scientific research last week (15 September).
It will function independently from the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MHESR) and have a separate, as yet undisclosed, budget. Its exact start date has yet to be decided.
The authority will oversee all of the science and technology centres associated with universities and have the capacity to fund research directly. It will also prepare science policy reports reviewing subjects including best practice for funding research, measuring the quality of scientific research, and methods for knowledge dissemination.
The SRA will suggest educational programmes and provide analysis for the MHESR on Iraq’s needs to build its scientific and technological capacity. It will also provide advice to the MHESR and university science centres on topics such as ethics, socioeconomic impact, health and environmental concerns and intellectual property rights.
The Iraqi government is also set to consider a new law aiming to persuade scientists, innovators and engineers abroad to return to the country.
Samir Ibrahim Abbas, deputy director-general at the Iraq Ministry of Science and Technology and a member of the ministerial committee preparing the law, says a draft will be ready within six weeks and submitted to the government.
The proposed law also offers incentives to top scientists and innovators working in Iraq.
These include increased salaries — currently on average less than US$1,000 a month — of 300–350 per cent making it equivalent to the Iraqi deputy ministerial salary level. Other benefits include exemption from the mandatory retirement age of 63 years and preferential treatment and reduced prices when buying land for housing.
Abbas says the law will reward different levels of scientists and innovators depending on their scientific achievements.
Scientists would be expected to apply for the benefits, overseen by a central body comprising representatives from scientific committees in different scientific and technological fields who would be responsible for the evaluation and assessment of candidates.
Erle Frayne Argonza
So many of our scientific models of ecological reality need gross revisions. I am aware for instance that the model for the ‘water cycle’ is badly flawed, yet the scientific community has not done much to revise it.
Here is another facet of reality—climate change—where the existing models are found to be flawed. From East Asian scientists, notably Beijing, come the observation that the existing models ‘ignore brown carbon’. It need not belabored that the models must be revised.
The news about the observations regarding the model is contained below. What is gladdening is that scientists were able to uncover the flaw, which will ensure revision of the model and the practical technologies coming out from the labs later.
[28 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
Current climate models ‘ignoring brown carbon’
Sun Xiaohua and Jia Hepeng
15 August 2008 | EN | 中文
Smog over Bangkok, Thailand
Flickr/gullevek
[BEIJING] Scientists have found that air pollution from East Asia contains an abundance of ‘brown carbon’ particles and say that atmospheric models need updating to incorporate their effect.
Current climate models take into account two types of aerosol carbon — organic carbon and black carbon — that arise from the burning of fossil fuels or biomass.
Black carbon strongly warms the atmosphere by absorbing light, while organic carbon absorbs light at a negligible level and has no warming effect.
It has already been claimed black carbon plays a much larger role in global warming than estimates made by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (see Black carbon climate danger ‘underestimated’).
But this approximation is too simple, according to Peter Crozier, an associate professor at Arizona State University (ASU) in the United States, whose team published their research in Science last week (8 August).
According to the authors, the method that is currently used to measure the warming effect of different types of particle doesn’t take into account the wide variations that can occur between types of carbon from different sources.
They instead used a technique based on a specialised type of electron microscope to directly determine the optical properties of individual carbon particles, and found that samples taken from above the Yellow Sea, east of China, have an abundance of brown carbon particles.
“Brown carbon has light absorbing properties that lie between strongly absorbing black carbon and materials that only scatter light and do not absorb,” co-author James Anderson, a research scientist at ASU’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, told SciDev.Net.
He adds that brown carbon both cools the Earth’s surface and warms the atmosphere, resulting in a complex role in global warming, hence the necessity to incorporate it into climate models.
Hu Guoquan, a senior scientist at the Beijing-based National Climate Centre, welcomes the study, saying it highlights the uncertainties of IPCC models.
“But more studies on the chemical structure and size of brown carbon particles must be done,” he told SciDev.Net.
In addition, Hu says, as many carbon aerosols pollutants are emitted by China or India — which have massive combustion of fossil fuels and biomass — judging their accurate warming or cooling effect must be done cautiously and avoid claims without sufficient scientific evidence, as this will contribute to determining the nations’ responsibilities in global warming.
Erle Frayne Argonza
On a case to case basis, each country has taken certain forms of action regarding climate change. India had recently formulated its action plan for climate change, a plan that served well as input to its cooperative efforts with South Asian countries.
The report is shown below.
Happy reading!
[12 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
India launches climate change action plan
T. V. Padma
4 July 2008 | EN
India’s solar mission aims to make its solar energy industry as competitive as its fossil fuel industry
Flickr/z1zzy
[NEW DELHI] India released its national action plan on climate change this week (30 June) with a focus on harnessing renewable energy rather than stringent emissions targets.
India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh released the plan ahead of his attendance at next week’s (7–9 July) G8 summit in Japan where climate change is expected to be discussed.
The action plan spells out eight priority missions that will promote India’s development objectives, with the “co-benefit” of tackling climate change.
The eight missions are: solar energy, enhanced energy efficiency, sustainable habitats, water conservation, sustaining the Himalayan ecosystem, developing a ‘green’ India, sustainable agriculture and building a strategic knowledge platform on climate change.
“Over a period of time, we must pioneer a graduated shift from economic activity based on fossil fuels to one based on non-fossil fuels, and from reliance on non-renewable and depleting sources of energy to renewable sources of energy,” Singh said.
The missions will be managed by the appropriate ministries, and specific programmes within the missions will be finalised by December.
Of these, solar energy will receive a big thrust. India receives the equivalent of about 5,000 trillion kilowatt hours of energy from the sun each year — 5.5 kilowatt hours per square metre each year — with most areas experiencing clear, sunny weather for 250 to 300 days.
The solar mission aims to tap this natural resource and make the country’s solar energy industry as competitive as the fossil fuel industry by setting up a new research centre, entering into research collaborations and encouraging technology transfer.
The plan does not spell out greenhouse gas emission targets, but states that per capita emissions in India will not exceed levels in industrialised countries. India is the world’s fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in absolute terms, but lies behind the US and Europe in terms of annual per capita emissions it (1.2 tonnes compared to 20 and 9.4 tonnes respectively).
The international environmental organisation Greenpeace, said in a statement that the plan is a “welcome first step” but has some weak areas that need to be addressed.
“The plan lacks clear policy prescriptions and targets for improving energy efficiency and reducing transportation emissions,” Srinivas Krishnaswamy, policy advisor for Greenpeace, India, told SciDev.Net.
“They should have placed more emphasis on mandatory emission standards,” he added.
Erle Frayne Argonza
Good morning from Manila!
Climate change is among the world’s hottest environmental and developmental issues. Climate change alone has so many facets to it, and some issues are so contentious they border hoax.
Below is a news item from South Asia, concerning concerted efforts by stakeholders to address climate change.
Happy reading!
[13 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
South Asian nations join forces to tackle climate change
Source: IRIN
9 July 2008 | EN | 中文
The countries have pledged to improve monitoring and exchange of information on impacts such as rising sea levels
Flickr/Sumaiya Ahmed
South Asian nations have adopted a three-year environmental action plan to reduce the impact of climate change in the region.
Environmental ministers from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka — adopted the declaration in Dhaka, Bangladesh, last week (3 July) following a three-day summit.
The action plan covers 2009–2011, with countries pledging to improve monitoring and exchange of information on disaster preparedness and extreme events, meteorological data, information on climate change impacts such as increased sea levels, glacial melting and biodiversity, and capacity for clean development mechanism projects.
The ministers called for more technology to fight climate change and better technology and knowledge transfer between SAARC member states.
They also called for a South Asia fund on climate change, with further discussions scheduled for the next SAARC summit in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in July.
Erle Frayne Argonza
Magandang araw! Good day!
Is there any other news that brightens up the world better than the latest Olympics games held at Beijing? Amid the world’s running agog in quagmires of hatred and wars, caused largely by demonic minds among the West’s oligarchy, there are still developments that enchant us even as they stir up hope in a planet that had now moved into a new Dark Age.
The latest Olympics held at Beijing deserve a plethora of praises from everyone, with the greatest accolades given to the People’s Republic of China. With excellent playing grounds nestled on an exquisite ‘bird’s nest’ structure of stunning architectural wonder, excellently organized and provided for, what else can you say of this Beijing sponsorship of the games? Only those rowdy Western Establishment media had raised an unparalleled noise to detract China from its developmental goals, a smear campaign orchestrated by who else other than the oligarchs of the West who would never want any country other than the West’s to go up the prosperity ladder. Only the Herd quacks believe in Western media black propaganda anyway.
It turned out that China performed stunningly well not only because of the superb preparations, but also because its athlete earned the top number of gold medals. Of course the oligarchic Western media has that issue of age-related protest and that uninterestingly impertinent news about the stabbing by a Chinese of a kin of a delegation from some country, and what did those largely impertinent dung earn? They never made a dent on China’s performance in the games. They only highlighted the dirt and corruption of Establishment media generally.
For us Asians, China’s Olympic rise is very, very important. We now acknowledge that, as far as the development path is concerned, China leads the rest of the pack here in Asia. This is also true for the sports development path which China showed to be doubtlessly the leading nation. The event likewise formally signaled that China was opening its doors to the world as a great civilization once again, which revives notions of an earlier period of Middle Kingdom when a great mighty civilization opened itself up to the world. These developments are happening among the most dynamic regions of Asia by the way, and there is China to lead us here which causes elation.
To recall, there was the pestering question of supposedly polluted air in Beijing which is nothing more than Establishment media’s baloney detraction. The United Nations Environmental Planning or UNEP released a note that shows a different situation altogether: that China has been moving positively towards transforming its vehicular power needs from gas to natural gas and alternatives, greening the city altogether, and other positive moves that belie the media mogul’s and oligarchs’ noisy propaganda. The same issue of pollution, to note, were also raised in the other city venues of the past, and amid such pestering eco-fascist and media quackery, all of the games ensued in the same cities anyway.
There was also that noisy propaganda about China’s handling of Tibet. How little do people realize that the Dalai Lama of Tibet has become a pure politician, and is being handled by the British Intelligence from behind the scenes. The Tibet fiasco was largely orchestrated by operators of the British Empire, the same oligarchic circles who recently egged Georgia to practice some guzzling gun power on Russia over South Ossetia, the same oligarchs who were responsible for the destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, the same oligarchs who orchestrated the chaotic inflationary situation of gas and grains, the same oligarchs who are now pushing for a World War III that will start with Iran’s bombing sometime late this year or next year.
Just the same, despite the slanders, fiascos, and mudslinging tirades by the Western oligarchy against China, the Beijing Olympics went on. And with China’s lead along the way, Asia’s athletes did shine somehow. This is just the start, and hopefully the Olympics can be sustained across the decades so that future generations can see the re-nascence of Asia into a powerhouse of Hope such as what Asians did in the latest Olympic feat.
So, to the organizers of the Olympics in Beijing from the side of the People’s Republic of China, cheers of victory! Hail the Middle Kingdom!
[27 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Erle Frayne Argonza
Magandang araw! Good day!
Intellectual property planning has been a fairly neglected area in planning engagements by developing economies. Often than not, development planning presumes that citizens will patent or copyright their innovations, with the effect of scaling up patents at turtle pace.
China has shown the way to accelerate the pace of patenting by innovative citizens precisely by addressing the problem of intellectual property planning. This is new area in development planning, as one can see from the news caption below.
Happy reading!
[03 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
New intellectual property plan to boost Chinese patents
Hepeng Jia
24 June 2008 | EN | 中文
Flickr/H@r@ld
[BEIJING] China has launched a national intellectual property rights (IPR) strategy to encourage innovation and strengthen its legal framework in the field.
The National IPR strategy outline, published earlier this month (5 June) by China’s State Council, aims to turn China into “a nation with an internationally leading level of creating, using, protecting and managing IPR by 2020″.
The strategy aims to boost the number of patents held by Chinese citizens over the next five years.
It also seeks to establish an effective legal protection system for genetic resources and indigenous knowledge.
Although China is one of the world’s top three nations in terms of patents issued (see China hits top three in patent applications), most of its patents for invention are owned by foreign companies operating in the country. According to China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), 53 per cent of the 67,948 invention patents issued in 2007 were filed by foreign individuals or companies.
The strategy will see China’s government revise laws on patent, trademarks and copyrights. The website of SIPO quoted its head, Tian Lipu, as saying that the new patent law will be submitted to the legislature for approval before the end of the year.
Previous Chinese patent law focused on the protection of the patent, but this revised law will also outline how a patent can be used and benefits shared, as well as how to avoid patent abuses.
The strategy will also seek to increase the ability of government departments and courts to help protect IPR.
Sun Pingping, a spokesperson for SIPO, told SciDev.Net that although there are many existing laws and regulations on IPR, the national strategy can coordinate their functions by guiding their revisions, refining and updating when necessary.
Sun Guorui, an intellectual property law professor at Beihang University in Beijing, says that the main significance of the strategy is it makes IPR creation and use a core value for policymaking.
“For example, in the science community, awards or promotion are given mainly as the result of publishing high-impact papers. But in the future, the number of patents filed can be an important indicator of scientists’ output,” Sun told SciDev.Net.
He adds that the strategy will need to be followed by more concrete action implemented by different government departments. For example, the health ministry will have to finalise its measures on how to protect the patents of traditional Chinese medicine.
Erle Frayne Argonza
Who says that community-based health care systems won’t work? In the Philippines this has been an on-going effort, with the University of the Philippines leading. Couples of communities were adopted by the U.P. Manila in other regions precisely to study the effects of intervention via community organization.
Below is a news caption about a study that shows the effectiveness of community-based health care. Community-based health care has already been revolutionizing access to health care by many poor folks in the south.
Enjoy your read!
[02 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
Community-directed healthcare ‘effective’, finds study
Abiose Adelaja
23 June 2008 | EN
In the strategy, family members help deliver drugs and administer treatment, instead of patients visiting a clinic
Flickr/CharlesFred
Community-administered healthcare is effective in combating a range of illnesses including river blindness and malaria as well as micronutrient deficiencies, according to a study of over two million people in three African countries.
The researchers say restrictive health department policies on who can administer medications should be altered so that other illnesses can be tackled in a similar fashion.
Community-directed drug intervention (CDI) has proved successful in delivering the drug Ivermectin to treat river blindness, also known as onchocerciasis. In the strategy, family members help deliver drugs and administer treatment, instead of patients visiting a clinic.
The study looked at the effectiveness of CDI in strategies to fight river blindness, later pairing it with treatments against malaria, tuberculosis and micronutrient deficiencies, in Cameroon, Nigeria and Uganda. Community dispensing of drugs, vitamin A supplements and insecticide-treated mosquito nets was compared with conventional delivery strategies over three years.
Researchers found that the number of feverish children receiving the right antimalarial treatment doubled, exceeding the 60 per cent target set by the Roll Back Malaria campaign. The use of insecticide-treated bednets also doubled.
Vitamin A supplementation coverage was also significantly higher in districts using CDI compared with those that did not. But community-directed interventions for tuberculosis proved only as effective as treatment from clinics.
Samuel Wanji, a researcher at the University of Buéa who conducted the southwest Cameroon part of the study, says the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control — linked to the WHO and with 19 health ministers on the board — has given the go-ahead to extend the use of CDI for river blindness in countries that have lower, but still significant, levels of the disease.
The expanded programme will investigate whether CDI works as well in places where disease infection is less intense, and is scheduled to begin before the end of the year. Dispensing of other medications will be added as the programme progresses.
“The study’s approach is very useful for increasing access to health and will reduce the burden on health facilities,” says Hans Remme of the WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Disease.
But a shortage of drugs and other materials remains a drawback, according to a WHO report of the study.
Erle Frayne Argonza
Good morning from Manila!
A heartwarming news from India and Vietnam concerns the reduction of prices of vaccines for cholera. To recall, India is among the countries that lead in bringing down pharmaceutical costs, thus saving the day for many poorer folks in the south who are relentlessly victimized by the rent-seeking practices of Western drug companies.
Enjoy your read!
[02 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Cheaper cholera vaccine passes pilot trial
Sanjit Bagchi
23 June 2008 | EN | 中文
The current international cholera vaccine is too expensive for developing countries
Flickr/larskflem
A reformulated oral vaccine against cholera promises to be an affordable and effective weapon to combat the disease for people living in endemic areas of developing countries, according to a new study.
The internationally licensed cholera vaccine currently available is too expensive for use in developing countries, where it is most needed.
Vietnam produces its own two-dose oral cholera vaccine and distributes it through its public health system at US$0.40 a dose. Nine million doses have been delivered so far.
To kick-start the process of scaling up this vaccine in developing countries around the globe, the vaccine was reformulated to comply with WHO standards.
Researchers from India, Korea and Sweden conducted a pilot trial of the vaccine at Kolkota’s Infectious Diseases Hospital in eastern India. Cholera is endemic in Kolkota.
The study evaluated the vaccine’s safety and efficacy outside Vietnam.
Participants were healthy and included 101 adults aged 18–40 years and 100 children aged 1–17 years. They received two random doses of either the vaccine or a placebo, 14 days apart.
After immunization, 53 per cent of the adults and 80 per cent of the children showed at least a four-fold increase in their antibody levels against Vibrio cholerae O1, the predominant strain of cholera-causing bacteria.
Safety tests revealed that “no adverse event occurred more frequently in the vaccinated than in the placebo group”, say the researchers.
“Cholera affects a large number of children in developing countries, and so a vaccine that is safe and effective for children sounds impressive, and the development as a whole appears to be a step towards global rolling out of the cholera vaccine,” says Sumana Kanjilal, associate professor of paediatric medicine at Calcutta National Medical College Hospital, India.
The reformulated vaccine is now undergoing a trial in around 70,000 people in Kolkata. “If the vaccine is found to be safe and protective, this could pave the way for the use of this vaccine in the control of cholera worldwide,” the researchers write.
The study was published in PLoS ONE.
Erle Frayne Argonza
We peoples of Southeast Asia have been caught up in the cycles of droughts and heavy rains for as long as our memories can recall. The El Nino comes every now and then, bringing either a rainy season or too dry a spell for an entire crop season, thus endangering our own agricultural production.
Biotechnology innovations incidentally are very dynamic in the region, or in East Asia as a whole. The breeding of maize varieties that are resistant to drought has been among the forefront of research & development. Below is a news caption of the R&D efforts in maize by exemplar countries Philippines, Indonesia, and China.
Happy reading!
[31 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
A-maizing: Asia’s drought-resistant maize varieties
Source: CIMMYT
16 June 2008 | EN | 中文
Flickr/thisfrenchlife
Maize is a staple crop in South-East Asia, both as a food and animal feed. But the farmers that grow the crop often live in drought-prone areas, where poor soil and disease exacerbate poor harvests.
To counter this, the Asian Maize Network was created, funded by the Asian Development Bank and led by CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre).
The network, running from 2005–2008, brings together scientists from China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam to develop drought-tolerant maize varieties — and deliver them to farmers.
Genetic material from drought-tolerant varieties was supplied by CIMMYT and funds put into setting up testing programmes in all five countries.
The first varieties have already been released for further testing in individual countries, and many more are in the pipeline, with the eventual aim of providing them to poor farmers at affordable prices.
The scientists involved say the project has helped them both in terms of capacity and partnership building. Many agree that the training and working with researchers from other countries has given them a new perspective on their work.
“I’m motivated to see that what I’m doing will really help farmers,” says one.
erleargonza
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