Dr. Hiroshi Ikeura (Senior Researcher, Rural Development Division) and his colleagues received the “Best Paper Award, Sawada Prize” at the 2017 International Conference of International Society of Paddy and Water Environment Engineering (PAWEES) held on November 9, 2017. The award-winning paper titled “Factors affecting differences in the rainy season rice yield in a lowland area of a mountainous village in Lao PDR” was published in the journal Paddy and Water Environment, and it presented the results of a study on the factors affecting lowland rice yields in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, also known as Laos. In this study, the authors found that late ponding caused transplanting delays in the lower parts of the lowland areas, and that rice grain yields in those fields were significantly lower than in the upper and middle parts of the lowland areas. The results suggest that water shortages prior to land preparation lead to delays in transplanting, and that this indirectly results in yield reduction.