A study, which identified knowledge hotspots in Indonesia and the Philippines, ranked the Department of Agriculture – Philippine Rice Research Institute (DA-PhilRice) as the third most prolific rice research-producing institution in the two countries.
Screening and retrieving articles published from 2001 to 2021 on various topics and questions surrounding rice research, the recently published article, Two decades of rice research in Indonesia and the Philippines: A systematic review and research agenda for the social sciences, reviewed 2243 rice-related articles cumulatively written by more than 6000 authors and published in over 900 scientific journals. There were 160 institutions that contributed to the scholarly publications from the two countries, with researchers attached to universities and research organizations dominating the contributions.
DA-PhilRice contributed 122 papers on a wide range of topics such as rice worms, hybrid rice, alternate wetting-and-drying technology, and community development strategies on rice production.
The same article noted that former DA-PhilRice consultant and national scientist Bienvenido Juliano is among the most prolific authors or those with more than 10 published articles during the period covered.
DA-PhilRice’s impressive local and global collaborations, as noted in the review, significantly helped in enabling the institute to push for the rice research for development agenda.
The paper, Effect of water-saving irrigation on rice yield and water use in typical lowland conditions in Asia, published in Agricultural Water Management in 2004 has the most number of global citations. The authors were from the International Rice Research Institute, Wageningen University, Huazhong Agricultural University, DA-PhilRice, and the Ministry of Water Resources (Beijing). Dr. Eduardo Jimmy P. Quilang, DA-PhilRice OIC director for research, is among the authors.
John C. de Leon, DA-PhilRice executive director, congratulated the institute’s researchers and development workers for “sustaining the passion for scholarly discourse, publication, and collaboration in rice research for development (R4D) these recent 20 years.”
Overall, authors Ginbert P. Cuaton and Laurence L. Delina observed a stark increase in the number of scholarly articles published from Indonesia and the Philippines. The increase was noticed in 2014 when the scholarly articles averaged hundreds as opposed to just 57 from 2001 to 2013.
In terms of subject areas, agriculture and biological sciences topped the list followed by, on a far second, biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology. There are a few studies conducted in the social sciences and humanities.
Cuaton and Delina, who are researchers from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, chose to review articles from the two countries owing to their high volume of production and level of rice consumption.
The review article appeared in a Springer Nature-published journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.
