(RFA) A top rice research center headquartered in the Philippines, a country vulnerable to climate change, says it is developing varieties of this grain and staple of Asian diets that can survive droughts, temperature extremes and flooding.

Scientists at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), in the university town of Los Baños, south of Manila, say they are working around the clock because they believe that “no crop is as vulnerable to global warming as rice.”

The institute and its partners in recent years have come up with rice varieties that can grow amid adverse weather conditions and in soil exposed to high levels of salt – a trend expected to become more frequent and extreme with climate change, experts said.

“We do expect in the coming years, with climate change and with frequencies of typhoons and droughts, that we may be needing more of these varieties,”Alice Laborte, senior scientist at IRRI, told a small group of visiting reporters invited to the institute earlier this month.