"The Institute is targetting within the year an integrated management system of standards with its desire to acquire an ISO 9001 certification on quality management systems. We want to ensure that we are not merely advocates of good practices, but instead we are practitioners and true believers," said PRRI Executive Director Leocadio S. Sebastian in a statement.

The rice agency has acquired an ISO 14001 certification on environmental management systems since 2004. But it believes ISO 9001 and OHSAS 18001 will firm up its claim and commitment to quality programs, innovation in products and services, and the establishment of a safe workplace for its workers.

For 2006, PRRI is intensifying its research on unfavorable rainfed lowland ecosystems which should boost rice yield even as rainfed areas remain to occupy a significant part of the country’s total rice farms.

Of some 1.2 million hectares of rice land during the rainy season, the Philippines has some 400,000 hectares of rainfed areas.

The Department of Agriculture-attached rice agency will have a focus on three major programs for 2006— unfavorable rainfed lowland ecosystems, irrigated favorable lowland, and knowledge management and promotion.

"Philrice will focus on developing technologies, not just generating more information. Researchers should see to it that this would lead to the development of new technologies that can be adopted by farmers. It would make integrated crop management (ICM) system as an entry point in the promotion of technologies at the farm level," Sebastian said.

ICM is a system farm scientists regularly teach farmers which could be a venue for new rice technologies being developed now by PRRI including tungro-resistant rice, bacterial blight-resistant rice, and Vitamin A and multinutrient-rich rice.

PRRI is already set to also standardize its property management system so that its equipment and assets can be well accounted for.