The Integrative Research Paradigm of IRRI and the OneCGIAR

A little more than a decade ago, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) started on a journey of revitalization through adopting the concept of systems research. Instead of being just a rice breeding and affiliated sciences research center, it expanded its vision of impact on the rice-based food systems. In almost the same vein the OneCGIAR has also attempted to aggregate the commodity-based research into food systems-based research that critically caters to specific overarching 'Impact and Action Areas'. Incidentally, IRRI's structure and operations map on to these Impact and Action areas very well. Hence, IRRI's research directly caters to societal, economic and environmental sustainability. It does so through a coherent pipeline that spans the upstream discovery component all the way to product delivery, dissemination, and impact assessment. While a circular 5D-pipeline of demand, discovery, development, deployment and distinction attend to the ground-level realities of demand, development and acceptance of a product, the Four Flagships attend to proximal deliverables under challenging conditions of change brought about by the CGIAR restructuring and COVID-19. Prioritizing specific products under the flagships ensures that institutional support is available to fast-track the deliverables. Clear examples now highlight the potential of such approaches. Thus, despite the challenges of climate change, political unrest of war and global medical encumbrances, the stable partners of IRRI like Korea have helped to come close to deliverables.