environments, depending upon water availability. Generally, rice does not thrive in a water logged area, yet it can survive and grow herein and it can also survive flooding. Lowland, rainfed, which is drought prone, favors medium depth;
waterlogged, submergence, and flood
prone 2. Lowland, irrigated, grown in both the wet season and the dry season 3. Deep water or floating rice 4. Coastal Wetland 5. Upland rice is also known as 'Ghaiya rice', well known for its drought tolerance. History of domestication and
cultivation See also: Oryza sativa. History of domestication and cultivation. Asia Terraced rice paddy on a hill slope in Indonesia. Semi-ripe Paddy in West Bengal, India The Banaue Rice Terraces in the Philippines. Rice field under monsoon clouds in Pegu Division, Burma Rice crop in Madagascar Woman drying rice in Bhaktapur The commonly accepted view is that rice
was first domesticated in the region of the Yangtze River valley in China Morphological studies of rice phytoliths from the Diaotonghuan archaeological site clearly
show the transition from the collection of
wild rice to the cultivation of domesticat
The large number of wild rice
phytoliths at the Diaotonghuan level dating
from 12,000–11,000 BP indicates that wild rice collection was part of the local means of
subsistence. Changes in the morphology of
Diaotonghuan phytoliths dating from
10,000–8,000 BP show that rice had by this time been domesticated. Soon afterwards the two major varieties of indica and japonica rice were being grown in Central China. In the late 3rd millennium BC, there was a rapid expansion
of rice cultivation into mainland South east,
Asia and westwards across India and Nepal. In 2003, Korean archaeologists claimed to
have discovered the world's oldest domesticated rice. Their 15,000 year old age challenges the accepted view that rice
cultivation originated in China about 12,000 years ago. These findings were received by academia with strong skepticism, and the results and their publicizing has been cited as being driven by
a combination of nationalist and regional interests. In 2011, a combined effort by the Stanford University , New York University , Washington University in St. Louis, and Purdue University has provided the strongest evidence yet that there is only
one single origin of domesticated rice, in the Yangtze Valley of China. The earliest remains of rice in the Indian subcontinent have been found in the Indo- Gangetic Plain and date from 7000–6000 BC though the earliest widely accepted date for
cultivated rice is placed at around 3000–
2500 BC with findings in regions belonging to
the Indus Valley Civilization . Perennial wild rices still grow in Assam and Nepal. It seems to have appeared around 1400 BC in
southern India after its domestication in the northern plains. It then spread to all the fertile alluvial plains
watered by rivers. Cultivation and cooking
methods are thought to have spread to the
west rapidly and by medieval times,
southern Europe saw the introduction of rice
as a hearty grain. According to Zohary and Hopf (2000, p. 91),
O. sativa was recovered from a grave at Susa in Iran (dated to the 1st century AD) at one end of the ancient world, another
domestication of rice in South Asia. Today, the majority of all rice produced
comes from China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Philippines, and Japan. Asian farmers still account for 92% of the world's
total rice production. Companion plant One of the earliest known examples of companion planting is the growing of rice with Azolla, the mosquito fern, which covers the top of a fresh rice paddy's water,
blocking out any competing plants, as well
as fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere for
the rice to use. The rice is planted when it is
tall enough to poke out above the azolla.
This method has been used for at least a thousand years. Africa Main article: Oryza glaberrima African rice has been cultivated for 3500
years. Between 1500 and 800 BC, Oryza glaberrima propagated from its original centre, the Niger River delta , and extended to Senegal. However, it never developed far from its original region. Its cultivation even
declined in favour of the Asian species,
which was introduced to East Africa early in the common era and spread westward. African rice helped Africa conquer its famine of 1203. Middle East Rice was grown in some areas of southern Iraq. With the rise of Islam it moved north to Nisibin, the southern shores of the Caspian Sea and then beyond the Muslim world into the valley of Volga. In Egypt, rice is mainly grown in the Nile Delta. In Palestine, rice came to be grown in the Jordan Valley. Rice is also grown in Yemen. Europe The Moors brought Asiatic rice to the Iberian Peninsula in the 10th century. Records indicate it was grown in Valencia and Majorca. In Majorca, rice cultivation seems to have stopped after the Christian conquest, although historians are not certain. Muslims also brought rice to Sicily, where it was an important crop long before it is noted in the plain of Pisa (1468) or in the Lombard plain (1475), where its cultivation
was promoted by Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and demonstrated in his model farms. After the 15th century, rice spread
throughout Italy and then France, later
propagating to all the continents during the
age of European exploration. The Ottomans introduced rice in the Balkans, it was an unknown plant in the Balkans before the Ottoman conquest. Caribbean and Latin America Rice is not native to the Americas but was
introduced to Latin America and the Caribbean by European colonizers at an early date with Spanish colonizers introducing Asian rice to Mexico in the 1520s at Veracruz and the Portuguese and their African slaves introducing it at about the same time to Colonial Brazil. Recent scholarship suggests that enslaved Africans played an active role in the establishment of
rice in the New World and that African rice was an important crop from an early period. Varieties of rice and bean dishes that were a staple dish along the peoples of
West Africa remained a staple among their
descendants subjected to slavery in the Spanish New World colonies, Brazil and elsewhere in the Americas. The Native Americans of what is now the Eastern United States may have practiced
extensive agriculture with forms of wild
rice. United States South Carolina rice plantation (Mansfield Plantation, Georgetown.) In 1694, rice arrived in South Carolina, probably originating from Madagascar. In the United States, colonial South Carolina and Georgia grew and amassed great wealth from the Slavery labor obtained
from the Senegambia area of West Africa and from coastal Sierra Leone. At the port of
Charleston, through which 40% of all
American slave imports passed, slaves
from this region of Africa brought the
highest prices, in recognition of their prior
knowledge of rice culture, which was put to use on the many rice plantations around Georgetown, Charleston, and Savannah. From the enslaved Africans, plantation
owners learned how to dyke the marshes and periodically flood the fields. At first the
rice was milled by hand with wooden
paddles, then winnowed in sweetgrass baskets (the making of which was another skill brought by slaves from Africa). The
invention of the rice mill increased profitability of the crop, and the addition of
water power for the mills in 1787 by mill wright Jonathan Lucas was another step forward. Rice culture in the southeastern
U.S. became less profitable with the loss of slave labor after the American Civil War , and it finally died out just after the turn of
the 20th century. Today, people can visit the
only remaining rice plantation in South
Carolina that still has the original winnowing barn and rice mill from the mid-19th century at the historic Mans field Plantation in Georgetown, South Carolina. The predominant strain of rice in the
Carolinas was from Africa and was known
as "Carolina Gold." The cultivar has been preserved and there are current attempts
to re introduce it as a commercially grown crop. Rice production by county in the United States, 2010 In the southern United States, rice has been
grown in southern Arkansas , Louisiana, and east Texas since the mid-19th century. Many Cajun farmers grew rice in wet marshes and low lying prairies where they could
also farm crayfish when the fields were flooded. In recent years rice production has risen in North America, especially in the Mississippi River Delta areas in the states of Arkansas and Mississippi. Rice cultivation began in California during
the California Gold Rush, when an estimated 40,000 Chinese laborers immigrated to the
state and grew small amounts of the grain
for their own consumption. However,
commercial production began only in 1912 in the town of Richvale in Butte County. By 2006, California produced the second largest rice crop in the United States, after Arkansas, with production concentrated in six counties north of Sacramento. Unlike the Mississippi Delta region, California's
production is dominated by short- and
medium-grain japonica varieties, including cultivars developed for the local climate
such as Calrose, which makes up as much as 85% of the state's crop. References to wild rice in the Americas are
to the unrelated Zizania palustris More than 100 varieties of rice are
commercially produced primarily in six
states (Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana,
Mississippi, Missouri, and California) in the U.S. According to estimates for the 2006 crop year, rice production in the U.S. is
valued at $1.88 billion, approximately half
of which is expected to be exported. The U.S. provides about 12% of world rice trade. The majority of domestic utilization of U.S. rice is direct food use (58%), while 16%
is used in each of processed foods and beer. The remaining 10% is found in pet food. Australia Rice was one of the earliest crops planted in
Australia by British settlers, who had
experience with rice plantations in the
Americas and the subcontinent. Although attempts to grow rice in the well-
watered north of Australia have been made
for many years, they have consistently
failed because of inherent iron and manganese toxicities in the soils and destruction by pests. In the 1920s it was seen as a possible irrigation crop on soils within the Murray- Darling Basin that were too heavy for the cultivation of fruit and too infertile for wheat. Because irrigation water, despite the
extremely low runoff of temperate
Australia, was (and remains) very cheap,
the growing of rice was taken up by
agricultural groups over the following
decades. Californian varieties of rice were found suitable for the climate in the Riverina, and the first mill opened at Leeton in 1951. Even before this Australia's rice production greatly exceeded local need, and rice exports to Japan have become a major
source of foreign currency. Above-average
rainfall from the 1950s to the middle 1990s [49] encouraged the expansion of the Riverina rice industry, but its prodigious
water use in a practically waterless region
began to attract the attention of
environmental scientists. These became
severely concerned with declining flow in
the Snowy River and the lower Murray River. Although rice growing in Australia is highly
profitable due to the cheapness of land,
several recent years of severe drought
have led many to call for its elimination
because of its effects on extremely fragile
aquatic ecosystems. The Australian rice industry is somewhat opportunistic, with
the area planted varying significantly from
season to season depending on water
allocations in the Murray and Murrumbidgee irrigation regions. Production and commerce World wide rice production. Production of rice by country — 2010 (million metric tone People's Republic of China 197.2 India 120.6 Indonesia 66.4 Bangladesh 49.3 Vietnam 39.9 Myanmar 33.2 Thailand 31.5 Philippines 15.7 Brazil 11.3 United States 11.0 Japan 10.6 Cambodia 8.2.
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