India launches rice knowledge management portal

On 16 July, the Indian Prime Minister launch a new rice portal. The portal will help stakeholders to get information on all aspects of rice.

The Rice Knowledge Management Portal (RKMP), funded by National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP), would use various ICT (information technology and communication) tools to provide info even on mobile phones.

The portal is built on web 2.0 standards and caters to the location specific information needs of many stakeholders throughout India.

There seem to be 2 different versions:

http://www.rkmp.co.in/ or http://rkmp.iari.res.in/.

Nutrient Manager for Rice - Mobile app for the Philippines

NMRiceMobile is a mobile phone-based application of Nutrient Manager for Rice, which uses an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) application.

NMRiceMobile is targeted for farmers and extension workers without internet access. When internet access is available, Nutrient Manager for Rice web-based application is recommended.

With NMRiceMobile, a farmer or extension worker in the Philippines calls a toll-free number to access the Nutrient Manager for Rice. A voice prompt instructs the caller to answer questions about his/her rice field by pressing the appropriate number on the phone's keypad. After all the questions are answered, NMRiceMobile sends a text message with a field-specific nutrient management guideline for rice.

See a demonstration

Radio and video help trigger rice innovation in Africa

The Africa Rice Center (WARDA) is using radio and video to get information about improved technologies and market opportunities.

An article in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability shows how "farmer-to-farmer video has great potential to enhance sustainable agriculture by encouraging local innovations."

More:

• WARDA news release.
  
• Related postings

IRRI science more accessible with open licenses and social media

The April-June 2009 issue Rice Today contains a great article about rice science in the digital age.

The story essentially introduces some of the pathways used by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to maximise the accessibility of its research outputs. These include adoption of a creative commons licence and publishing on several platforms - Google Books, Flickr, and YouTube.

A related presentation by IRRI's Gene Hettel - 'Adopting and Utilizing Creative Commons to Facilitate the Dissemination of Rice Knowledge and Technology' - gives a vivid insight into IRRI's CC approach to licensing and shows examples from the different platforms.

The presentation concludes: "Creative Commons: the 'pot of gold' for users of rice information around the world!"

nb: some other presentations to the 'Symposium on Common Use Licensing of Publicly Funded Scientific Data and Publications' are on slideshare.

IRRI rice photos on Flickr

The International Rice Research Institute has uploaded several thousand images to Flickr - the photo sharing site.

The photos are grouped into collections and sets - 'rice is food', 'rice insects', 'IRRI staff', 'rice in the lab', and so on. It's possible to see some of the photos on a world map.

All the photos are licensed using the Creative Commons "Attribution Only" license.

Photo: Raymond Panaligan – Part of the image collection of the International Rice Research Institute

Tags: agricultural information rice photos

Open access to IRRI research

In the IRRI Library blog, Mila Ramos of the International Rice Research Institute introduces a paper by IRRI for the International Public Knowledge Project Conference in July 2007.

The article reports on joint initiatives of the IRRI Library, the IRRI Communication and Publications Services and the IRRI Training Center to address information and publishing management hurdles.

The paper demonstrates how the links between these two fields in the middle of the scholarly publishing chain can bridge the gap between public goods (knowledge about rice in this case) and the intended primary users, namely researchers and extensionists in the national agricultural research and extension systems in the developing countries that IRRI serves.

The authors conclude: "Information that will provide impact to IRRI’s constituent clients must be delivered to them through whatever open access form that is appropriate and useful, being it 'cutting edge' digital versions or traditional 'books-on-the-shelf' hard copies."

Check the conference blog post on this presentation

the full text paper is also online

Tags: agricultural information rice irri open access