Our Eyes on Some Rice!

     Hey fellow bloggers! Once again, we are the Science Gurus. As said in our previous posts, we are currently posting about the happenings in our UP Los Baños fieldtrip. In our previous posts, we talked about the Dairy Training Institute (DTRI), the Institute of Plant Breeding (IPB), and the most recent stop we talked about, the Museum of Natural History.

As Filipinos (and Asians, who are stereotypically called rice-loving people), we wouldn’t go without visiting our favorite part of our dishes: rice. After visiting the Museum of Natural History, we arrived at a place which researches on what most, if not all, Filipinos love to eat anything with, the rice grains. Where we arrived for this kind of plant? The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), of course. What is IRRI? IRRI is a nonprofit research and training organization. IRRI develops new rice varieties and rice crop management techniques that help rice farmers improve the yield and quality of their rice in an environmentally sustainable way. They aim to reduce poverty and hunger, improve the health of rice farmers and consumers, etc.  

Before actually arriving at IRRI, most, if not all, of us expected to learn about one major thing there: rice. And of course, we were right. But rice wasn’t all we learned there!

Their intro signage

     When we came inside the “Riceworld” we were greeted by a tour guide who led us to a room that had about eight rows of chairs, a stage, and a screen, a big one, just like the one you see in movie theaters. They presented a video, about 10-20 minutes long, to us, and as we watched, we learned that IRRI has been aiming to reduce poverty and hunger, improve the quality of rice, and many other things. “Rice is life,” the audiovisuals had said. And it is true; rice is, indeed, life. Most people in the world are dependent on rice as part of their main dish. “Without rice, even the cleverest housewife cannot cook,” a famous Chinese proverb says. It simply means that rice is an essential thing in the world. Watching the video in IRRI, most of our minds were refreshed with the thought that, although the first thing that would come into most people’s minds when rice is conversed about would be using rice as food, rice is also made a career by many. We realized that many farmers plant rice for a living, not only here in the Philippines where agriculture is still a main occupation, but also in many other countries.

After watching the audiovisual they presented to us, we got to tour their small museum! Here are some pictures of the museum: 

A painting dedicated to the farmers of the world

A primitive machine used before for rice production

Whoever thought of rice wine?

A computerized system that gives info on agriculture in Asia

 And finally, we give you our daily, nutritious rice-filled cereals!

     This was a quite interesting place for us since one thing would be that it had a big, wide open field in which we could run on! But of course, we were limited to running only for a few minutes for our teachers were like eagles.

A field that IRRI uses for its research


And of course, since this is a place full of rice, we got to find info on a rice organism!

1. Rice

• Common name: Rice/ rice grain
• Scientific name: Oryza sativa
• Scientific classification:
•          Kingdom: Plantae
           Division: Magnoliophyta
           Class: Liliopsida
           Order: Poales
           Family: Poaceae
           Genus: Oryza
           Species: sativa

         a. Characteristics: The rice plant is a tall crop well-grown in the tropics. It contains several vitamins such as zinc, iron, potassium, and etc. 


       b. Ecological relationship: Rice is a producer in an ecosystem. Herbivores predate on it for nutrition. Humans also use rice for when they eat.

AND HERE ARE TWO PICTURES OF RICE!

The rice crop

The processed rice in an authentic bowl

Credits and References:

1) Teacher Rye for the pictures used in this post

2) Information about the rice

3) Information about IRRI

(Check out the IRRI website here!)

Well, wasn't that a great experience? Our eyes finally met some rice in a museum! See us in our next lecture, and our last stop at this out-of-this-world field trip!