Origin of Rice
According to
Jones (1995) the African rice
rice oryza glaberrima originated from wild rice oryza bathii, some 3,500 year ago and its
offspring domesticated probably
in inland, delta area of niger from where it spreads through the upper
Niger Valley to the rest of West
Africa. In view of its importance
indigenous Africa rice is one of the
least known major cereals until only
recently when scientist using
biotechnology techniques began to
unlock its great potential (WARDA
1999). The major type of rice grown in Nigeria
is the Asian rice (Oryza Satina,) the
exact zone of it domestication remains
uncertain, although it is certainly
South East Asia. Recent studies have
suggested that, it may have been domesticated twice, once in India and japonica race, its
route of entry into Nigeria can be in two
direction Portuguese traders, introduced Asian rice
from East Africa
to West Africa some 450
year ago. It could have also
spread through the races and trans –Sahara trade (Jones 1996). The major areas
of production in the world include China, India, Thailand, Indonesia Burma, USA.
And Brazil China and India are the world largest producers and probably because of this the initial works on parboiling of paddy started in India (Ghose et al,
1960).
Eice Varieties
Rice has 120,000
varieties the richest gene bank in the plant kingdom,
there has been great progress in rice genome sequencing projects recently by using
Indcia (9311) and Japonica (Nipponbane),varieties (IRRI, 1997) . rice has only two cultivated species
oryza sativa linn (the
African cultivated species)
and oryza glaberrima
steud (the west Africa
cultivated species). Oryza sativa is by
far the more widely utilized of the two.
By contrast, oryza glaberrima has
musch less diversity because of a
relatively short cultivation history and
a narrower dispersal than
oryza sativa. Apart from the two main cultivated species O.
sativa and O. Sativva and O. glaberrima. Another species recently grown
in Africa is New Rica.
(New Rice for Africa ).
It became evident at a point that the genes for adaptations to the Africa environment
where not present in any of the African
rice varieties (the sativa ) WARDA scientists led BY M.P Jones developed the New Africa role,
the interspecific hybride programmes by
combing the hardness of O.
glaberrima the African rice with
the productivity of O. Satika,
the Asian species . The African parents endow
the new rice with resistance to drought local pest (ARGM) diseases (RYMV and blast)
problem soils and ability to suppress needs. The
difference that deliberate
efforts have been taken to improve the
quality of processed rice (Ihedioha and Odoemena 2006)