March 13, 2007	Tuesday	Safar 23, 1428

MANILA: The Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Trust and the International Rice Research Institute agreed on Monday to spend $600,000 a year in perpetuity to protect thousands of varieties of rice. The agreement, described by Philippines-based IRRI as the first of its kind in the history of modern agricultural research, will benefit the IRRI-run Genetic Resources Centre, which houses more than 100,000 samples of rice and is the biggest and most important such collection in the world.—AFP