Reed College in Portland , Oregon and Stanford University in Palo Alto , California ensued , where she earned a BA and an MA in biology at both institutions , respectively . A Fulbright Scholarship brought her to Sweden , where she obtained a second MA in plant physiology . The educational capstone would be a PhD . – completed in 1990 – in molecular and physiological plant biology from UC Berkeley . It was during this postdoc that she felt the draw of rice , an inclination stemming from the aforementioned fact that it feeds half of the world ’ s population : “ I hoped my world could eventually be applied to help subsistence farmers , many of whom live on less than $ 3 a day .”
Work on identifying and mapping key rice genes was a collaborative effort , with the research spanning the globe , from rice farmers in Vietnam to she and her colleagues working in a laboratory at UC Davis . Ronald notes that “ the rice breeding and genetics community are close , and we share a common goal : to help smallholder farmers grow rice in a manner that will alleviate challenges and enhance food security ”.
She recounts those heady days of the 1990s , when the work that led to the isolation of that flood-resistant Sub1A rice gene was done : “ In 1995 , my lab isolated the rice immune receptor XA21 . My friend and colleague , Dave Mackill , stopped by my office soon after this discovery to tell me about a project he was working on . He explained the devastation wreaked by flooding in rice fields in India and Bangladesh , and asked if I would collaborate on isolating the key gene . I was thrilled to join the project and we quickly got to work ( using the platforms that my lab had created to isolate XA21 ) for the isolation of the Sub1A gene .”
Since then – and with the help of such entities as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – this rice strain has spread around the world . Its potency was demonstrated last year after the devastating floods in Bangladesh and eastern India . Here , more than 6 million farmers were growing the strain , and , indeed , it had a 60 % yield advantage when compared to conventional varieties . sustainabilitymag . com 23