MANILA, Philippines -- IBM is tapping unused computing power worldwide to help solve the rice crisis in developing countries like the Philippines.

IBM is collaborating with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), which is based in Laguna, and the University Washington in a project called World Community Grid.

The project aims to create a network that will tap into unused computing power from individual PCs worldwide to harness unused computing power in studying rice protein structures.

The goal is to create "super hybrids" that can withstand worsening climate conditions and produce more yield. Nearly a million PCs -- equivalent to the processing power of 167 teraflops -- have signed up for the project, IBM said in a statement.

World Community Grid will run a three-dimensional modeling program created by computational biologists at the University of Washington to study the structures of the proteins that make up the building blocks of rice.

Understanding the structure, according to IBM, is necessary to identify the function of those proteins and to enable researchers to determine which ones could help produce more rice grains, ward off pests, resist disease or hold more nutrients.

In the end, the project aims to create the largest and most comprehensive map of rice proteins and their related functions, helping agriculturalists and farmers pinpoint which plants should be selected for cross-breeding to cultivate better crops.

“There are between 30,000 and 60,000 different protein structures to study," said Dr. Ram Samudrala, associate professor in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Washington.

"Using traditional experimental approaches in the laboratory to identify detailed structure and function of critical proteins would take decades," said Samudrala. "Running our software program on World Community Grid will shorten the time from 200 years to less than two years."

The project received an initial grant of $2 million from National Science Foundation in the United States.