It was developed by an IRRI team consisting of Peter Jennings, Hank Beachell, Akira Tanaka, T.T.
[1] Promoters such as the IRRI and farmer benefactors of IR8 have called it 'miracle rice', and celebrate it for fighting famine.
IR8 was the eighth of 38 crossbred rice varieties in a 1962 experiment by IRRI.
[7][1][2] The semidwarf-1 gene (sd-1 or Os01g0883800), which encodes an enzyme in the production of the hormone gibberellin, which affects plant height; this improved its yield.
However, it “did not fit most rice-growing situations,” which involve heavy monsoons or deep flooding.