How Has SRI Spread Around the World?
Before drawing any conclusions about SRIs efficacy, CIIFAD waited for three years of results, until 1997, following normal practice for agricultural science. It then took two years to get others outside Madagascar to take an interest in SRI — because SRI seemed too good to be true. In 1999-2000, researchers at Nanjing Agricultural University in China and at the Ministry of Agricultures Agency for Agricultural Research and Development (AARD) in Indonesia tried SRI methods. Their results, along with those of the China National Rice Research Institute, verified that more productive phenotypes of rice could be produced by using these alter-native methods (Wang et al., 2002; Gani et al., 2002; Zhu et al., 2002; Tao et al., 2002). The scientist known as the father of hybrid rice, Prof. Yuan Longping, director of China National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Center, also validated SRI methods (Yuan, 2002). In June 1999, the secretary of Tefy Saina, Justin Rabenandrasana, made a present
