Anuário Brasileiro do Arroz 2011 - Unemat

For almost five
centuries, red rice
has been planted
and consumed
in Brazil’s
Northeastern
regional cooking,
but is threatened
with extinction
Red is
good
Staple food of slaves in colonial
times, red rice in the Northeast, also
known as rice of the land or Venice
Rice, produced in Vale do Piancó,
State of Paraíba, is now being rescued
through a process that seeks
the Geographical Indication label
for the cereal now being threatened
with extinction. Among the targets,
the initiative of the growers,
researchers, government and nongovernment
organizations seek to
prevent the genetic material from
being lost, provide food safety to the
hinterland people, create means that
stimulate production and consumption,
give the rice its due and win international
recognition through the
Geographical Indication distinction.
Cultivated over almost five centuries
up to the present as a family
business in the fields of Paraíba,
Pernambuco and Rio Grande do
Norte, this reddish cereal is a delicacy
in the northeastern cuisine. It
is also found, on a smaller scale,
in Ceará, Bahia, Alagoas and in
the North of Minas Gerais. The
area planted to this cereal in Brazil
reaches some 10 thousand hectares
per season, half of them in Paraíba.
Recently, demand for it has been rising
in restaurants in huge consumer
centers like São Paulo (SP), Rio de
Janeiro (RJ) and Brasília (DF).
“It is a kernel of relevant social
and economic importance”, says
José Almeida Pereira, researcher
with Embrapa Mid-North, in Teresina
(PI). According to him, the cereal
grown in the region is certainly an
ecologically friendly product, since
no agrochemicals have ever been
used. These are subsistence crops,
without any technology, with yields
of 1 ton per hectare. It has nothing
to do with the red rice that infests
the fields in the South, where its
mutation is a weed.
DISTINCTION The process
to conquer the Geographical
Indication label for the red rice of
Vale do Piacó (PB), which comprises
the municipalities of Santana dos
Garrotes, Nova Olinda, Piancó, Olho
D’água, Aguiar, Emas, Catingueira
and Igaracy, is now in its consolidation
phase and seeks, initially,
the Indication of Origin. An agreement
has been signed between the
Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and
Food Supply (Mapa), the Federation
of Agriculture and Livestock in
Paraíba (Faepa) and the National
Rural Learning Service (Senar-PB) for
executing the process, which is supposed
to be concluded by July 2011.
During this first half of the year, the
producers are getting acquainted
with the necessary Regulations and
area limitations, under the responsibility
of the Brazilian Institute of
Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
According to Manoel Octávio
Silveira da Mota, one of the coordinators
of the project, “the label
represents the continuity of the crop
in accordance with its origin and
regional characteristics, besides creating
a security network around the
red rice, adding commercial value
to it”. One of the great challenges
of the project is to organize the production
chain and the management
systems.
The collection of germ plasm
samples across the Northeast, North
and part of the Southeast came up
with 26 different varieties. They
give rise to the genetic material
database, which is supposed to be
the source for cultivars of good agronomic
traits and better management
technologies, to be generated
by Embrapa. The corporation runs
observation and experimentation
units in Paraíba to transfer technologies
to the crop. Two breeds were
seeded in Fazenda Mocó, in Souza
(PB) — the MNA PB 0405 and the
MNA CH 0501 for trials, with good
initial results and are poised to become
commercial varieties. In 2011,
Embrapa Rice and Beans (GO) joined
the project.
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