| Advances in information and communications technology give IRRI both the opportunity and obligation to share information in new ways. We now have an imperative to share equitably and provide access to knowledge and information collected by researchers around the world. Previously, this has been technically very difficult, if not impossible. However, with new technologies, the Internet, and the rapidly declining price of mass storage of information, the potential for sharing knowledge is greater than ever before. IRRI has a duty to think about how to make that potential become reality.
Program 6 will see IRRI convening wide communities of researchers and extension workers who come together around real problems and challenges in rice research and development. In this role, the Institute is also working to build the next generation of rice researchers.
In 2007, the first full year of its activity, the program worked toward its major goals of optimum stewardship of information and knowledge, sharing this knowledge in an equitable way, and acting as a conduit for research — both basic and applied — from advanced research institutions to NARES and, finally, farmers.
Progress was made on all Program 6 outputs in 2007. For the first output — the development of a Crop Science Information Resource — the following activities were undertaken:
• Germplasm information for rice genetic resources, breeding, and international testing was integrated into an International Crop Informa-tion System (ICIS; http://www.icis.cgiar.org/) database hosted as the International Rice Information System (IRIS; http://www.iris.irri.org/);
• A catalogue of stress genes was implemented to facilitate comparative genomics for Generation Challenge Program (GCP) crops (http://dayhoff.generationcp.org/). Genomics is the science of discovering genetic structure, variation, and function, and the inter-relationships among these;
• A portal was established for the International Rice Functional Genomics Consortium (IRFGC; http://irfgc.irri.org/);
• Data from the OryzaSNP project to sub stantially characterize the molecular diversity of 20 representative rice germplasm varieties were published through the IRFGC portal; and
• A start was made on facilities for a community-curated Encyclopedia of Rice Science.
 Management of the Rice Knowledge Bank was strengthened to ensure that extension services and farmers have reliable access to scientific knowledge. The Cereal Knowledge Bank (CKB) has been initiated in collaboration with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) following the same principles of authentication and access. Rice, maize, and wheat extension information is now available in a single CKB portal (http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org/ and http://knowledgebank.cimmyt.org/).
Widely used portal technology, Joomla! (http://www.joomla.org/), has been employed for both the science information resources and the knowledge banks. A Community Relationship Management information system has been deployed using a not-for-profit version of a commercial system called Sales-Force. IRRI-owned technical information has been made freely available as open content through a contract with Google Inc. (described in more detail later), which has made the full text of 301 IRRI books available on the Internet.
The Crop Research Informatics Laboratory (CRIL) has implemented an Information and Communications Service to support research programs. This service includes consultation and training for biometrics, data management, and bioinformatics as well as support for collaboration tools (http://cropwiki.irri.org/ and http://cropforge.org/), statistical programs and data, and information management software. Updated versions of Crop-Stat (www.irri.org/sci-ence/software/cropstat.asp; a statistical software package), ICIS, and GCP (http://cropforge.org/projects/iciscomm and http://cropforge.org/proj-ects/pantheon, respectively) software tools were developed and released throughout 2007.
Program Outputs:
Output 1: Crop Science Information Resource
Output 2: Cereal Knowledgebank
Output 3: World Rice Community Portal
Output 4: Increasing application of ICT
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International Rice Research Institute 2010