The Poverty Elimination Through Rice Research Assistance or PETRRA project, was generously funded by the United Kingdom Department for International Research (DFID). From 1999 to 2004, the project was managed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in close collaboration with the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI). It was an experiment in pro-poor agricultural research.

Under PETRRA there were 45 sub-projects (SPs) commissioned for technology development, uptake methods research and policy research. There were more than 47 partner agencies representing national, international, universities, NGOs and private organizations. There was a project steering committee(PSC), chaired by the Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) and a technical committee (TEC) chaired by the Director General of BRRI. Over the life of the project there was an annual output to purpose review (OPR) and a project completion review. For each of these there was a national-international review team. For each review there was a report of more than 100 pages and project working paper of 100-250 pages. Each sub-project submitted quarterly reports and a final completion and evaluation report. This would amount to more than 5,000 pages of documentation. Most project reports end up in an archive and may or may not influence policy! It was suggested by Margaret Quinn, the team leader for the fourth OPR, that the development of a box-kit or series of briefs would help capture learning that would then be available to be shared and to influence future policy and initiatives. We are thankful for the seed that was sown at that time.

The series of books cover overview, strategy, policy, newspaper articles, the value-based competitive grant system, communications, gender, uptake pathways, monitoring and evaluation, and briefs on each of the SPs.