History of Rice

History of Rice Oryza sativa was domesticated from the wild grass Oryza rufipogon roughly 10,000–14,000 years ago. the 2 main subspecies of rice – Indica (prevalent in tropical regions) and japonica (prevalent within the subtropical and temperate regions of East Asia) – aren’t believed to possess been derived from independent domestication events. Another cultivated species, O. glaberrima, was domesticated much later in West Africa.

Recent genetic evidence shows that each sort of Asian rice, both indica, and japonica, comes from one domestication event that occurred 8,200–13,500 years ago within the Pearl River valley region of China.

In China, extensive archeological evidence points to the center Yangtze and upper Huai rivers because of the two earliest places of O. Sativa cultivation within the country. Rice and farming implements dating back a minimum of 8,000 years are found. Cultivation spread down these rivers over the subsequent 2,000 years.

History-of-rice-cultivation

Puddling the soil – turning it to mud to interrupt it down and stop an excessive amount of water percolating away – and transplanting seedlings were likely refined in China. Both operations became integral parts of rice farming and remain widely practiced to the present day. With the event of puddling and transplanting, rice became truly domesticated.

The movement to western India and south to Sri Lanka was also accomplished very early. Rice was a serious crop in Sri Lanka as early as 1000 B.C. The crop could are introduced to Greece and therefore the neighboring areas of the Mediterranean by returning members of Alexander the Great’s expedition to India around 344-324 B.C. From a middle in Greece and Sicily, rice spread gradually throughout southern Europe and to a couple of locations in northern Africa.

As a result of Europe’s great Age of Exploration, new lands to the west became available for exploitation. Rice cultivation was introduced to the New World by early European settlers. The Portuguese carried it to Brazil and therefore the Spanish introduced its cultivation to many locations in Central and South America. the primary record for North America dates from 1685 when the crop was produced on the coastal lowlands and islands of what’s now South Carolina.

It’s thought that slaves from West Africa who were transported to the Carolinas within the mid-18th century introduced the complex agricultural technology needed to grow rice. Their labor then insured a flourishing rice industry. By the 20th century, rice was produced in California’s Sacramento Valley. The introduction into California corresponded almost exactly with the timing of the primary successful crop in Australia’s New South Wales.

Regional development of rice cultivation

Asia

History-of-rice-cultivation4Based on archeological evidence, rice was believed to possess first been domesticated within the region of the Chang Jiang valley in China. Morphological studies of rice phytoliths from the Diaotonghuan archaeological site clearly show the transition from the gathering of untamed rice to the cultivation of domesticated rice.

The massive number of untamed rice phytoliths at the Diaotonghuan level dating from 12,000–11,000 BP indicates that wild rice collection was a part of the local means of subsistence. Changes within the morphology of Diaotonghuan phytoliths dating from 10,000–8,000 BP show that rice had by this point been domesticated.[28] Soon afterward the 2 major sorts of indica and japonica rice were being grown in Central China. within the late 3rd millennium BC, there was a rapid expansion of rice cultivation into mainland Southeast Asia and westwards across India and Nepal.

In 2003, Korean archaeologists claimed to possess discovered the world’s oldest domesticated rice. Their 15,000-year adulthood 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 therefore the results and their publicizing have been cited as being driven by a mixture of nationalist and regional interests. In 2011, a combined effort by the Stanford University, NY University, Washington University in St. Louis, and Purdue University has provided the strongest evidence yet that there’s just one single origin of domesticated rice, within the Yangtze Valley of China.

The earliest remains of the grain within the Indian subcontinent are found within the Indo-Gangetic Plain and go back 7000–6000 BC though the earliest widely accepted date for Oryza sativa is placed at around 3000–2500 BC with findings in regions belonging to the Indus Valley Civilization. Perennial wild rice still grows in Assam and Nepal. It seems to possess appeared around 1400 BC in southern India after its domestication within the northern plains. It then spread to all or any of the fertile alluvial plains watered by rivers.

Cultivation and cooking methods are thought to possess spread to the west rapidly and by medieval times, southern Europe saw the introduction of rice as a hearty grain. Sativa was recovered from a grave at Susa in Iran (dated to the first century AD) at one end of the traditional world, another domestication of rice in South Asia. Today, the bulk 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.

Africa

History-of-rice-cultivation5African rice has been cultivated for 3500 years. Between 1500 and 800 BC, Oryza glaberrima propagated from its original center, the Niger delta, and extended to Senegal. However, it never developed far away from its original region. Its cultivation even declined in favor of the Asian species, which was introduced to East Africa early within the Christian era and spread westward. African rice helped Africa conquer its famine of 1203.

Rest of the planet

Middle East

Rice was grown in some areas of southern Iraq. With the increase of Islam, it moved north to Nisibin, the southern shores of the Caspian then beyond the Muslim world into the valley of Volga. In Egypt, rice is specially grown within the Nile Delta. In Palestine, rice came to be grown within the Jordan Valley. Rice is additionally grown in Yemen.

Europe

The Moors brought Asiatic rice to the Iberian Peninsula within the 10th century. Records indicate it had been grown in Valencia and Majorca. In Majorca, rice cultivation seems to possess stopped after the Christian conquest, although historians aren’t certain.

Muslims also brought rice to Sicily, where it had been a crucial crop long before it’s noted within the plain of Pisa (1468) or within 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 than France, later propagating to all or any of the continents during the age of European exploration. The Ottomans introduced rice to the Balkans.

Caribbean and Latin America

Rice isn’t native to America but was introduced to Latin America and therefore the Caribbean by European colonizers at an early date with Spanish colonizers introducing Asian rice to Mexico within the 1520s at Veracruz and the Portuguese and their African slaves introducing it at about an equivalent time to Colonial Brazil. Recent scholarship suggests that enslaved Africans played a lively role within the establishment of rice within the New World which African rice was a crucial crop from an early period. sorts 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 within the Spanish New World colonies, Brazil et al. within the Americas.

United States

In the USA, 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 very best prices, in recognition of their prior knowledge of rice culture, which was put to use on the various rice plantations around Georgetown, Charleston, and Savannah.

From the enslaved Africans, plantation owners learned the way to dyke the marshes and periodically flood the fields. initially, 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 the profitability of the crop, and therefore the addition of water power for the mills in 1787 by millwright Jonathan Lucas was another breakthrough.

Rice culture within the southeastern U.S. became less profitable with the loss of slave labor after the American war, and it finally died out just after the turn of the 20th century. Today, people can visit the sole remaining rice plantation in South Carolina that also has the first winnowing barn and rice mill from the mid-19th century at the historic Mansfield Plantation in Georgetown, South Carolina. The predominant strain of rice within the Carolinas was from Africa and was referred to as “Carolina Gold.” The cultivar has been preserved and there are current attempts to reintroduce it as a commercially grown crop.

In the southern us, 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 might also farm crawfish when the fields were flooded. In recent years rice production has risen in North America, especially within the Mississippi Delta areas within 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 his or her own consumption. However, commercial production began only in 1912 within the town of Richvale in Butte County. By 2006, California produced the second-largest rice crop within the us, 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.

More than 100 sorts of rice are commercially produced primarily in six states (Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and California) within the U.S. consistent with estimates for the 2006 crop year, rice production within the U.S. is valued at $1.88 billion, approximately half which is predicted to be exported. The U.S. provides about 12% of the world rice trade. the bulk of domestic utilization of U.S. rice is direct food use (58%), while 16% is employed in each of processed foods and beer. The remaining 10% is found in pet