Sauer - 1993 - Historical geography of crop plants, a select rost

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Monocots 211 heavily fertilized, This was the beginning of the so-called Green Revolution, which came later to the rest of Asia and the West. On the subtropical island of Taiwan, scientific rice breeding began in the 1930s and involved hybridization between tall native varieties and semi-dwarf varieties from Japan and China. In tropical Asia, some early hybridization experiments were conducted in the Dutch East Indies but without notable success. The major breakthrough in new hybrids for tropical Asia came after establishment of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines in 1962. Desirable traits from a semi-dwarf Taiwanese variety and a tall Indonesian variety were combined in a new high-yielding hybrid, the famous IR8. In 1983, about 40% of the rice acreage of tropical Asia, including the East Indies, was planted to IR8 and subsequently developed hybrids. Their high yields permitted the grain supply to more or less keep up for two decades with human population increase. However, similar yield increases are not predicted for the future. The new rice varieties have done well only on the better lands where water levels are tightly controlled and heavy nitrogen fertilization is profitable. The IRRI and collaborating agencies are, of course, attempting to breed varieties for more marginal lands, but results are expected to be slower and more modest than those in the 1960s and are not expected to keep up with projected increases in population. Thailand still had a suiplus of rice for export during the 1980s, but tropical Asia as a whole is again a rice importer with the U.S. a leading source. Rice from Spain regularly went along as provisions for the early explorers and colonists of the Americas, and some was promptly planted there, e.g., in Hispaniola under Columbus and Puerto Rico under Ponce de Leon. It is unlikely that these first introductions took hold. By the early 1600s, rice cultivation for local use was reported in Cuba, Jamaica, and the non-Spanish colony of Saint Christopher in the Lesser Antilles. On the American mainland, rice was being grown under irrigation in the Cauca Valley of Colombia by about 1575. By about 1600, Panama was exporting rice to Peru every year. Rice was being planted soon after 1600 in Peru, Venezuela, and Brazil. Early tropical American planting was usually in coastal lowlands and worked by blacks. In the 1700s, Jesuit missions thrust rice cul'|;ivation on the native Indians in the Orinoco and Amazon basins. Meanwhile, O. sativa had been independently introduced in the late 1600s to the British colonies in southeastern North America, perhaps initially from West Africa. In Í699, a ship from Madagascar brought to Carolina a variety with larger grain. The earliest North American records refer to upland rice planting, but irrigated rice planting began on a small scale in the early 1700s, perhaps using skills of slaves from Madagascar and Africa. Before the Revolution, new varieties of upland rice were introduced to the Carolinas from Cochin China and China. Jefferson had upland rice brought from Egypt, and there have been innumerable subsequent introductions from Asia and Africa.
212 Historical Geography o f Crop Plants: A Select Roster In tropical America, O. sativa has also been enriched by innumerable introductions subsequent to the original ones from Spain. Presumably the Manila galleon brought some uneaten rice to Mexico. The Dutch introduced rice varieties from the Carolinas to the Guianas about 1700 as a slave plantation crop. With the end of slavery in the 19th century, Dutch, French, and English sugar planters in the Guianas, Trinidad, and elsewhere brought in indentured labor from the East Indies, Indochina, India, and other rice growing Asian countries. These new populations brought a huge increase in the demand for rice. They probably also brought additional rice varieties and improved techniques of cultivation, including irrigation. Since the mid-19th century, rice has become a common, cheap daily food of Latin Americans in general, not just those with an Old World heritage. Upland rice became very widely grown by shifting cultivation in slash-burn clearings. Irrigated rice has also expanded during the 20th century, especially in the Guianas where, since independence, small farmers have taken it over from the plantation system. Heavy capital investment has recently been attracted to several irrigated rice schemes in various Latin American countries, including Brazil, where Japanese colonists brought intensive modern methods to rice production in the Amazon basin. Brazil is not self-sufficient in rice and imports large quantities mainly from Uruguay and Argentina, whieh have extensive, well-watered alluvial plains. Meanwhile, in the U.S. after the Revolution, commercial planting expanded greatly in coastal marshes of the Carolinas and Georgia. After emancipation, rice planting moved westward to the lower Mississippi Valley and Gulf coastal plains, which are still the main U.S. rice region. A secondary U.S. rice center developed in the Central Valley of California since 1912 with seed from Japan and China. Cultivation techniques are, of course, quite unlike those in Asia, relying heavily on expensive machinery and petroleum rather than human labor and water buffalo. In California, most of the operations, including seeding and application of agricultural chemicals, are done with airplanes, and the man hours required to produce a ton of rice are about 1 % of those in Asia. However, yields per unit of area and time are roughly equal, which testifies to the robustness of this aquatic grass. U.S. rice growing also contrasts with Asia in that much of the crop is exported. Amounts fluctuate wildly with price and water supplies, but average over 5 million tons a year. In the U.S. breeding of new hybrid rice varieties began in the 1920s and involved crosses between Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and Philippine varieties. Some of the U.S. bred varieties have become important in Australia and Latin America. Current breeding involves much use of IRRI germ plasm. ZIZANIA — NORTHERN WILDRICE (Aiken et al. 1988; Hayes et al. 1989) Zizania is a genus related to Oryza with one species Z. latifolia native to eastern Asia and two to eastern North America. One of the latter, Z. texana, is a perennial marsh grass endemic to Texas. The other, Z. aquatica (inch Z.
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Sauer - 1993 - Historical geography of crop plants, a select rost

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