Surp...RICE!

Surp...RICE! Another post brought to you by the Minigurus! 
Did you get "surpriced"?

Now, can you guess what this post is all about? It's the fourth site out of the five sites we visited in our field trip.
Ok, we'll give you a hint. Look at our title. If you get it, high five.
This post shall be all about our stay at the International Rice Research Institute or as we like to call it, IRRI. 
On the way to IRRI:
Khaim expected to learn how the people at IRRI help rice farmers here and abroad.
Margot was keen on learning how rice is useful to the world.
Reisa wanted to see how IRRI planted the rice with a more modern way.
And Gobs wanted to compare the IRRI scientists way of planting rice to the farmers'.


As soon as we arrived there, a video played showing the goals of IRRI.


We learned from the video that:
International Rice Research Institute is where scientists help our poor rice-planting farmers to grow more rice for the rice-consuming countries especially, in Asia. Farmers undergo a lot of difficulty in planting rice. Such as the weather. When it rains hard, the plants will drown. When there is drought, the plants will shrivel up and die.
So scientists at the IRRI help plant more rice to feed many rice-consuming countries. IRRI is not only found in the Philippines, but is also found in other countries.


Or at least, that's what we remember.
After that, we walked around a museum showing rice and products made from rice like: Rice crispies! YAY! 
We also saw traps for pests who ate the rice. Like rat traps. Well, Reisa's not too fond of rats.


Finally, Reisa took down notes on the only plant organism we saw: rice. 


Rice
Common Name: Rice
Scientific Name: Oryza sativa
Classification: Division Angiospermophyta


This organism is interesting since it feeds many countries around the world. Reisa also found the process of cooking rice interesting.


Rice is a producer. It's at the bottom of the food chain. It also has ecological relationships with other organisms. An example is: predation. Rice is the prey while the organisms that consume rice are the predators, like humans. Another example is competition. Rice competes with other rice nearby for resources like sunlight.


So, all in all, we learned that:
1. IRRI helps farmers in planting rice.
2. Rice is very important to many people around the world.
3. Weather can affect rice and affect the consumers of it.


Now we've just realized how important rice really is. And all this time, we've been eating it for years and not noticing its importance.
But, we've also realized something else. This is our fourth site of our field trip. The next, and last, site will be published next, fresh from the oven (or in this case, the computer). So if you want to see how this field trip ends, watch out for our last post EVER.........of the field trip.
See you soon!


-Minigurus