OneRicePH Project: 25 New Rice Lines Moving Closer to Farmers in the Philippines

Philippines — September 2025. The OneRicePH project, a collaborative initiative led by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), the Department of Agriculture-Philippine Rice Research Institute (DA-PhilRice), and the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), has marked a significant milestone by advancing 25 promising new rice lines to the National Cooperative Tests (NCT). These varieties are one step closer to reaching Filipino farmers, offering the potential to boost productivity, strengthen resilience, and enhance food security in the country.

Why it matters: Rice is the staple food for millions of Filipinos, and improving both the yield and quality of local rice varieties remains a national priority. The 25 rice lines under the OneRicePH program have been carefully developed and evaluated to address the country’s most pressing agricultural challenges, including climate change, pest and disease pressure, and the need for higher yields to meet growing demand.

Features of the new rice lines:

• Higher yield potential: Many of the advanced lines are capable of outperforming traditional varieties in terms of grain output, ensuring better returns for farmers.
• Disease and pest resistance: Breeding efforts have focused on resilience against common rice diseases such as bacterial blight and blast, reducing dependency on chemical inputs.
• Climate resilience: Selected lines exhibit tolerance to drought, flooding, and salinity, helping farmers adapt to increasingly unpredictable weather patterns.
• Improved grain quality: In addition to agronomic traits, attention has been given to grain quality — including texture, taste, and milling recovery — to meet consumer preferences and market demands.

The road to farmers’ fields: The advancement of these rice lines into the NCT means that they will undergo wider, multi-location trials under actual farm conditions. These tests are critical to evaluating how the varieties perform across diverse agro-climatic zones in the Philippines. Successful candidates from these trials will move toward official varietal release and eventual distribution to farmers.

Farmer-centered innovation: The OneRicePH project emphasizes a participatory approach, involving farmers in the selection process and ensuring that new varieties not only perform well in test plots but also meet the practical needs of smallholder producers. Traits like shorter crop duration, lodging resistance, and grain quality are assessed with farmer feedback to ensure adoption and long-term impact.

National and global impact: By accelerating the development and release of these new rice lines, the Philippines is reinforcing its commitment to agricultural innovation and food security. Beyond national borders, the OneRicePH project contributes to global rice research by providing genetic resources and sharing knowledge that can benefit rice farmers in other parts of Asia and beyond.

Outlook: As the 25 rice lines progress through the final stages of evaluation, expectations are high that they will deliver higher yields, greater resilience, and better quality rice for Filipino farmers and consumers. The project’s ultimate goal is to ensure that Philippine rice farming remains competitive, sustainable, and capable of feeding future generations.

Conclusion: The OneRicePH project is more than just a breeding program; it is a vision for the future of rice farming in the Philippines. By aligning cutting-edge science with the realities of smallholder agriculture, it paves the way for a resilient and productive rice sector that can thrive in the face of climate and market challenges.