The Asian Productivity Organization (APO) is an international organization working to improve productivity in the Asia-Pacific region, with 21 member countries and regions. The APO has certified NARO as a Center of Excellence (COE) in 2023 for proposing "Climate-Smart Agriculture", a program which aims to both improve productivity and reduce GHG emissions in the agricultural sector. This is said to be the first ever COE to be certified in Japan and in the agricultural sector. APO-COE "Climate-Smart Agriculture" is currently implementing a project on "Soil Carbon Sequestration Visualization and Carbon Credit Methodology" with Thailand as its main partner.
A workshop on "Soil Carbon Visualization" was held at the NARO Tsukuba Campus from October 2 to 4, 2024, and an opening ceremony was held on October 2. At the opening ceremony, NARO President Dr.Kyuma and APO Secretary General Dr.Indra delivered greetings (Photo 1, 2).
Sixteen participants from eight countries attended this workshop. Prior to the workshop they also participated in the NARO-JIRCAS-FFTC symposium "Control of Greenhouse Gases Emissions and Rice Heavy Metals Absorption through Paddy Field Water Management" held in Tsukuba on October 1 and 2, 2024.
The workshop commenced on October 3 with the briefing about the aim of the workshop by Mr. Yokochi, Director, Development Strategy Center (NDSC) (Photo 3). Dr. Matsuura, Senior Researcher, NIAES explained the fundamentals of the RothC model and NARO's "Soil CO2 Absorption Visualization Site" with Dr. Hasegawa, Executive Researcher as moderator(Photo 4).
A hands-on session was held, where participants entered their own country's parameter data, such as climate, soil classification, and amount of organic matter input, into a model program created by NARO, and compared the predicted data result with the actual measured data of their country (Photo 5). On the second day, RPs (resource persons) from each country gave a presentation about their results (Photo 6). On the first day, few participants faced some difficulties with the simulation and unable to get output data, but everyone was able to get initial results by the second day. At the end of workshop all participants were satisfied with completion of initial program (Photo 7).
In the future, we plan to hold a workshop at Bangkok, Thailand in February 2025 to develop methodologies for biochar, an effective means of soil CO2 absorption.
