The Establishment of Rice Department

          Subsequent to the rice improvement project and the importance of rice to Thailand as well as its importance as major crop to the world, the government and executives in the rice circle decided to establish Rice Department in the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives. The Department would be responsible for rice research and development. H.E. General Pin Chunhawan, Minister of Agriculture at that time was very anxious about this new department establishment. The preparation of establishing the Department started in December 1953 and the Department was officially established on January 1, 1954. M.C. Chakrabhand Bhensiri Chakrabhandhu was the first Director General. The Department was responsible for the research on rice varieties improvement and dissemination; for the production improvement; for storage and protection; and other technical knowledge about rice to multiply good quality rice seeds and promote rice farming. Since the establishment of Rice Department, the government and general public have increased their interests in rice and realized its importance to the country.

          During the first years of Rice Department, technical staff was very small due to the shortage of trained personnel even though many people were interested to apply for the jobs and the Department required personnel to work in the Central office. However, it had more than 200 rice agents acted as the coordinators who directly contacted with farmers, explaining the Department's work and projects in the region. Many short training courses were offered to rice officials to increase the efficiency of their performance (Love, 1955).

          After the establishment of the Rice Department, the Ministry of Agriculture transferred many experiment stations to be structured under the new department and changed names to rice experiment stations such as Rangsit Rice Experiment Station, Kong Luang, Hantra, Bangkhen, Kok Samrong, Phimai, Sanpathong and Surin. Rice experiment stations played the important role in evaluating yields of rice varieties obtained from the rice improvement project; in testing rice varieties by comparing with the standard varieties and the experiments were generally laid out in Randomized Complete Block design. The assignment required close observation, data collecting, and had to use experiment plots at the station. Many experiment stations were established during the time of the Department of Agriculwre. Apart from Rangsit Station, there were many old stations such as Klong Luang station which started in 1922 as experimental site and operated as a full scale station in 1960. Hun Tra station started the construction in 1936, operated as a station in 1941 having M.L. Yingsak Israsena as its pioneer and first station manager. Many stations were set up during the operation of the Rice Improvement Project, especially during the years 1952-1953 such as Sanpathong station, Bangkhen, Kok Samrong, Surin, and Phimai. After the Rice Department was established, there were more stations. Major duties of most stations set up in 1955 were seed multiplication and other experiment assignments. During the first phase of operation these stations were called Rice Experiment and Seed Multiplication Station such as Phan, Chumpae and Kuangut. Chai Nat and Rachaburi stations were constructed in 1957. The station managers were responsible for the administration, the control of experiment and seed multiplication plots. Some managers were graduates in agriculture and some were former agriculturists.

          During the first phases of operation, there were few technical staff responsible for the experiment, except at stations having many experiment assignments. Stations' names in English must be recorded in the Experiment fieldbooks and in reports on the experiments. The full name was space and time consuming. Therefore, technical staff of the Rice Department had set up 3-English-letter code system for names of experiment stations. These codes have been acceptable and in use to-date. Some technical staff, both Thai and foreigners, did not understand the system and used other abbreviations which made it rather confusing to the original system.

          After six years of operations, the general public saw the accomplishments of the 1950 Varieties Improvement Project. Many regular rice varieties were considered released during 1956-1968 periodically according to reports compiled by Suvit (983) and Raruen Boonduang (1995).