November 2009: The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), a member of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), published the October to December issue of “Rice Today,” which features articles on climate change and rice harvests.

In “Circle irrigation: a new response to climate change,” Blake Onken notes that the use of center pivot irrigation reduces the need for flooding rice paddies and thus decreases methane emissions from growing rice. In “Odd Seasons,” Reiner Wasserman, Grace Centeno and Shaobing Peng describe that 2008 and 2009 have been two of the wettest, “dry seasons” on record in the Philippines and highlight that if the trend continues, crop management recommendations will have to be revised to help farmers adapt. In “A clearer picture,” Wasserman, Centeno and Kay Sumfleth describe the use of the UK Met Office Hadley Centre’s regional climate downscaling tool, Providing Regional Climates for Impact Studies (PRECIS), to identify areas of rice production with high vulnerability to climate change to aid in long-term planning for improved rice production. [Rice Today]