Myanmar President U Thein Sein at IRRI

Also see: http://irri.org/rice-today/myanmar-rises HE U Thein Sein, president of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, was at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI; http://irri.org) on 5 December 2013 to push for stronger research ties. He commended the decades-long partnership between IRRI and his country. Since 1965, IRRI has been involved with researchers, extension personnel, and farmers in Myanmar in introducing rice breeding material, hybrid rice technology, and locally adaptable designs of rice transplanters and threshers. The rice variety IR8, which marked the beginning of the Green Revolution, was introduced in Myanmar in 1967. But, given today's challenges and opportunities that abound for the country that could emerge as the next major rice producer in the world, President Sein called for an even stronger partnership, setting the tone for years of future collaboration. Myanmar has 60 million people and grows rice on 7.6 million hectares per year. The major rice-producing regions are in the delta, including Ayeyarwaddy, Bago, Yangon, and Mon states. These four areas make up more than half of the monsoon crop. The country's major rice ecosystems are rainfed lowland rice, deepwater submerged rice, irrigated lowland rice, and rainfed upland rice. In 2011, production was approximately 29 million tons, the seventh highest in the world, behind Vietnam and Thailand.