Asian agriculture, like Asian economies more generally, has grown at a healthy clip over the past several decades. In the 1980s, the agricultural gross domestic product (AgGDP) of many of the low-income countries in the region grew annually by 3 percent. For countries such as China and Indonesia, the rate was over 4 percent. This growth was partly due to a continuation of the Green Revolution gains of the 1970s, but at a slower pace. It was also the result of a substantial shift in the pattern of production that saw greater gains for higher-valued horticultural crops and for livestock, fishery, and forestry products than for the staple cereals and root crops. A sizeable share of the growth in Asian agriculture is due to the new technologies that emanated from national agricultural research efforts throughout the region and from international centers such as the International Rice Research Institute (IRR), the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). Despite these past successes, new concerns are being raised about the future (Byerlee and Pingali 1994, Rosegrant, Agcaoili-Sombilla, and Perez 1995): Will the region be able to maintain these past gains and foster the growth needed to feed and clothe the 4.5 billion people Asia is expected to have by 2020? Will it be possible to address the environmental consequences of agriculture in many land-and water-scarce Asian countries? Continued, and indeed expanded, investments in agricultural R&D are seen as crucial to meeting these pressing demands.