World Community Grid Tackles Rice Crisis

As concerns around the world mount about the shortage of rice, IBM and the University of Washington have launched the Nutritious Rice for the World project to develop new strains of rice that could produce crops with larger and more nutritious yields. The project will study rice at the atomic level using the computational force of World Community Grid, one of the world's most powerful computer systems, and then combine it with traditional cross-breeding techniques used by farmers throughout history.

Rice is the main food staple of more than half of the world's population. In Asia alone, more than two billion people get up to 70 percent of their daily dietary energy from rice. Already, every year, 10 million people die of hunger and hunger-related diseases.

"The world is experiencing three simultaneous revolutions: in molecular biology and genetics; in computational power and storage capacity; and in communications. The computational revolution allows scientists around the world to tackle almost unimaginably complex problems as a community, and in real-time," said Director General Robert Zieglier, of the International Rice Research Institute based in the Philippines. "While there are no silver bullets, rice production can be revitalized with the help of new technologies. The world community must invest now and for a long time to come."

World Community Grid will run a three-dimensional modeling program created by computational biologists at the University of Washington to study the structures of the proteins that make up the building blocks of rice. Understanding the structure is necessary to identify the function of those proteins and to enable researchers to identify which ones could help produce more rice grains, ward off pests, resist disease or hold more nutrients. In the end, this project will create the largest and most comprehensive map of rice proteins and their related functions, helping agriculturalists and farmers pinpoint which plants should be selected for cross-breeding to cultivate better crops.

"The issue is that there are between 30,000 and 60,000 different protein structures to study," said principal investigator, Dr. Ram Samudrala, at the University of Washington. "Using traditional experimental approaches in the laboratory to identify the critical proteins would take decades. Running our software program on World Community Grid will shorten the time from 200 years to less than two years."

Ultimately, this project could enable rice-producing countries to become more immune to future climate changes because they can quickly find the right plants for cross breeding, and create "super hybrids" that are more resistant to changing weather patterns. This research is also important in the U.S. and other countries because the knowledge gained creating the three-dimensional models can be easily transferred to wheat and corn.

"This project could ultimately help farmers around the world plant better crops and stave off hunger for some," said Stanley Litow, Vice President of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs and President of the IBM International Foundation. "People who want to be a part of something big can take a small step today by donating their unused computer time. Volunteers can personally effect on how quickly this research is completed and can make a significant difference for farmers and people in great need."

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