The study is a four-year project launched in 2006 with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). It will be undertaken until 2009 by a collaborative partnership between the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (lead institution) and multiple institutions particularly from the countries of Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines in the Southeast Asian (SEA) region. The project belongs to an umbrella program called the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management-Collaborative Research Support Program (SANREM-CRSP) managed by Virginia Tech.