Rice: A grain of history



Rice: A grain of history

Hope Diamond

Department of Biology

Southeast Missouri State University

Cape Girardeau, Missouri 63701

And the earth brought forth grass…Genesis 1 v. 12

Approximately 8000 years B.C. the first cereals became domesticated causing then to be entirely dependent upon humans for survival. These first domesticated plants were found contained within pottery in the Jordan Valley near Jericho (Chapman, 1992). Approximately 4000 years after the domestication of cereals began, the cultivation of rice occurred south of the Yangtze River (Hanks, 1972).

Rice may not have been the first cereal domesticated by man but it is definitely has become the most widely cultivated. Today, rice is the main staple of food for more than two thirds of the word population and is grown in more than 100 countries on every continent of the World (except Antarctica). The spectacular diversity exists in rice because of its long history of cultivation and selection under diverse environments. Each environment offers different light, moisture, temperature and soil creating mutations and variations within each field (Hanks, 1972). Humans have managed to create through selection and adaptation about 120,000 varieties of rice around the world. The greatest species variations occur in Asia, Oryza sativa, and Africa, Oryza glaberrima (Khush, 1997).

Rice Cousins

The Asian variety is a high yield and used for medicinal purposes as well as a food sources. According to Hartwell (1967–1971), the seeds of the rice plant are used in folk medicine for breast cancers, other tumors, warts, and stomach indurations. The flowers are dried as cosmetic and dentifrice in China, awns are used for jaundice in China (Duke and Ayensu, 1984). The stem is used for bilious conditions; ash for discharges and wounds, sapraemia in Malaya; infusion of straw for dysentery, gout, and rheumatism. The husk is used for dysentery and considered tonic in China. In China, rice cakes are fried in camel's fat for hemorrhoids; rice water is used for fluxes and ulcers and applied externally for gout with pepper in Malaya. Boiled rice is used for carbuncles in Malaya and poulticed onto purulent tumors in the East Indies. The root is considered astringent, anhidrotic, and is decocted for anuria. Sprouts are used for poor appetite, dyspepsia, fullness of abdomen and chest, and weak spleen and stomach in China. The lye of charred stems (merang, Indonesia) is used as a hair wash and used internally as an abortifacient. In the Philippine Islands, an extract (tikitiki), rich in antineuritic B1 vitamin, made of rice polishings, is used in treatment of infantile beriberi and for malnutrition in adults. In Java, the vitamins are extracted and supplied as lozenges (Reed, 1976).

Not surprisingly, both of these species, O. sativa and O. glaberrima, are thought to have evolved from the same primitive species Oryza perennis (Devos, 1997). O. perennis originated on Gondwanaland 130 million years ago, before the land mass broke apart into our continents of today (Khush, 1997). Originally, it was thought that O. glaberrima evolved from the O. sativa. Until the 1970’s, Africa wasn’t given credit for creating it’s own cultivation of rice and it was widely believed that rice and it’s cultivation were imported by European explorers to Africa.

Between 1500 and 800 B.C., the African species (Oryza glaberrima) propagated from its original center, the Delta of Niger River, and extended to Senegal. Different from it’s counterpart in Asia by being much more disease and drought resistant but not having the yield of Oryza sativa, However, it never developed far from its original region. Its cultivation even declined in favor of the Asian species, possibly brought to the African continent by the Arabians coming from the East Coast from the 7th to the 11th centuries.

|For 450 + years the native rice was not cultivated and was |[pic] |

|replaced with cultivation of the Asian species. Europe |Figure 1. 1800 Colonization of Africa. |

|carved Africa into colonies and forced Africans to grow | |

|export cash crops such as peanuts and cotton (Figure 1). | |

|Also the Asian variety was encouraged since the native red | |

|rice had much lower yields. | |

Slash and burn practices increased with the export crops being grown and the native species cultivation declined. The African way of cultivation was more ecologically friendly, they integrated cattle herding, fishing with cultivation of rice for a drought prone region and the rice itself was more adapted to the African climate (Becker, 1996).

Women’s Sweat

Rice is the primary source of nutrition and in Asia and Africa women are the harvesters – hoeing, sowing, weeding and transplanting and cultivation of rice is essential both cultures identity. In classical Chinese, the same term refers to both "rice" and "agriculture". In many official languages and local dialectics the verb "to eat" means "to eat rice". Indeed, the words "rice" and "food" are sometimes one and the same in eastern semantics. Mac Posop is Thailand’s rice mother. She gave body and soul to make mankind. She becomes pregnant when the rice flowers bloom and her offspring (rice) has its own kwan (soul)(Hanks, 1972).

|The cultural significance of rice is evident in ceremonies of |[pic] |

|West African villages (Linares, 1992). Some villages use rice to|Figure 2. Mortar and pestle used by African women |

|appease the spirits of the dead by offering it to those who have | |

|gone before. The Sere of Senegambia symbolically place the | |

|mortar and pestle she used to pound rice every morning on the | |

|grave of the deseased woman (Figure2). | |

The Diola of Casamance, Senegal, refer to rice cultivation as “woman’s sweat”. Food practices are still more central in women’s beliefs than in men’s and food was the only resource women controlled. These same women were in high demand during the peak of the slave trade.

Black Rice

The rice plantations of Carolina and later Georgia needed the knowledge of rice cultivation. Using cultural and language connections along with historical logs the ancestral heritage of slaves in SC and Georgia were deciphered. Most of the slaves of the rice plantations came from Gambia and later Senegal (Grant, 1993).

|[pic] |All along the Western Africa rice region seed selection |

|Figure 3. Shading of green shows general area of original rice |is the responsibility of females. There is a seed for |

|cultivation in Africa. Gambia and Senegal are both located within the |all major problems encountered within the landscapes. |

|green along the Western Coast. |From deep or shallow flooding, seasonal salinity within |

| |the marsh area, drought, high iron, even acidity, there |

| |was a rice seed specific for the environment. |

The women of Africa were very aware of the local environments and had a deep understanding of rice cultivations. This knowledge suggests that women themselves were the first to domesticate the rice (Currens, 1976). When the slave trade began the women were noted to be crucial in rice cultivation. This notoriety did not go without notice and rice plantation owners requested slaves from this area of Africa. The knowledge the women from Africa imparted to plantation owners was invaluable and many a rich man (Goodfriend, 1958). The cultivation methods and tools used in the south were the very same and those

|used in West Africa. The English-borne farmers had no |[pic] |

|knowledge of rice cultivation but it did not take long |Figure 4. Guinea was the primary area of export of slaves to South |

|for the land owners to impart that knowledge from the |Carolina and Georgia, It was also the center of rice cultivation. |

|slaves. By giving the slaves a shorter work day and | |

|allowing them time for themselves the slave used there | |

|knowledge to advance the cultivation for the highest | |

|yields | |

and therefore more freedom for themselves and their families. But this was not without some cost, after the civil war and reconstruction of the south the blacks were no better off. Generally, Europeans had little to no experience with the climate and conditions of America. The Africans not only had experience, but innovations needed by the colonists. The plantations could not survive without the labor and knowledge of the blacks. Jim Crowe laws kept the southern black in bondage without the chains and kept the plantations profitable. Within 20 years of the first plantation rice export was a high cash crop. Now the United States is second only to China in rice export.

Rice Today

The world population is increasing at an alarming rate and concerns of starvation on a global scale are increasing. The present annual rate of rice production, 560 million tons, must be increased to 850 million tons by 2025 to feed the increasing world population (Khush, 1997). More than 90% of the world rice production is in Asia; China and India being the largest producers (Reed, 1976). Still, it is not enough and rice varieties are being designed to not only have higher yield per acre but still stable to grow in the changing environments. NERICA is a rice being developed for drought prone Africa. The new rice smothers grain-robbing weeds like it's African parents, resists droughts and pests, and is able to thrive in poor soils. The trait of higher productivity conferred by it's Asian parents is also present, meaning that with few additional inputs the farmers using NERICA rice can double production and raise incomes. It is helping to meet multiple needs - food, nutrition and income - for millions of people in the humid tropics of West Africa. 

Bibliography

Becker, L. and Diallo, R. 1996. The cultural diffusion of rice cropping in Cote d’Ivoire. Geographical Review. 86 (4): 505-528.

Currens, G. 1976. Women, men and rice: Agricultural innovation in northwestern Liberia. Human Organization. 35 (4): 355-365.

Devos, K.M. and Gale, M.D. 1997. Comparative genetics in the grasses. Plant Molecular Biology 35:3-15.

Duke, J.A. and Wain, K.K. 1981. Medicinal plants of the world. Computer index with more than 85,000 entries. 3 vols.

Goodfriend, A. 1958. Rice Roots. Simon and Schuster. New York

Grant, D. L. 1993. The Way It Was In the South: The Black Experience in Georgia. University of Georgia Press. Athens and London

Hanks, L.M. 1972. Rice and Man. Aldine-Atherton, Inc. 16-22.

Hartwell, J.L. 1967–1971. Plants used against cancer. A survey. Lloydia 30–34.

Khush, G.S. 1997. Origin, dispersal, cultivation and variation of rice. Plant Molecular Biology 35: 25-34.

Linares, O. 1992. Power, Prayer and Production. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Nakagarhra, M., Okuno, K. and Vaughn, D. 1997. Rice genetic resources: history, conservation, investigative characterization and use in Japan. Plant Molecular Biology 35: 69-77.

Reed, C.F. 1976. Information summaries on 1000 economic plants. Typescripts submitted to the USDA.[pic]

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download