Colours of the Grainbow
By Jack Smith
Flavour of the month
Rice. It’s synonymous with the word for “food” in a dozen Asian countries, including China, where “chi fan le ma?” – “have you eaten (rice) yet?” is equivalent to asking someone how their day has been. The staple food of over half the world’s population, it is the predominant source of dietary energy in 17 countries in Asia and the Pacific, and much of Africa and South America.
First domesticated as long as 13,000 years ago in China’s Pearl River Delta, rice is one of the planet’s most diverse grains, and, in multiple forms, rules the Chinese dinner table from the tropical beaches of Hainan all the way to the frigid tundra of Heilongjiang. The International Rice Research Initiative, in partnership with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has identified the exact genetic makeup of more than 3,000 distinct varieties of rice.