Philippine rice farmers share positive experiences with Green Super Rice varieties in self-made YouTube videos

From 2020-2022, popular video-sharing website Youtube has seen a surge of rice farmers in the Philippines sharing their personal experiences with Green Super Rice (GSR). These farmer-made videos, ranging from several seconds to 10 minutes, feature on-field experiences from farmers in provinces such as Isabela, Bulacan, and Rizal, and document activities from seed preparation to harvesting. Many of the videos praise the performance of GSR varieties, particularly GSR Rc480 and Rc436.

Developed by the International Rice Research Institute with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GSR are novel rice varieties that can produce high and stable yields with fewer inputs like water, fertilizers, and pesticides, and have greater tolerances to different abiotic stresses such as drought, floods, and salinity. Through the Philippine Department of Agriculture, several GSR varieties have been disseminated to various provinces for farmers to cultivate.

Learn more about GSR in the Philippines in this IRRI news article or visit the GSR website at gsr.irri.org.

Below are some of the Youtube videos shared by farmers.