Global Rice Cultivation & Cultivars

Rice is the major food crop of Asia, but it is also getting popular in other continents due to increasing urbanization, easy to cook, and human migration. Rice area, production, and productivity are continuously increasing since mid-1960 with the development of semi-dwarf varieties. Its higher yield, better profitability, wide adaptation, and international collaboration have helped in reducing hunger. The global population has now crossed 7 billion in 2011, and there is need to produce more rice for growing population. Africa and Latin America can bring more area in rice, but in Asia, there is need to increase productivity, as there is little scope for area expansion. After working for 37 years in rice research in Asia and Africa, I realized that there is need to share experiences of rice cultivation, cultivars, and strategies in different rice growing countries to increase rice production in each country. There is also need to improve house hold food security through better technology transfer and reducing knowledge gaps. In Chapter 1, Global perspective on rice is given, while in Chapter 2, Wild rices and its related spp. and their utilization is given. Rice in India is covered as separate in Chapter 3. This book provides the rice cultivation in around 92 countries of the world, their biophysical constraints, and strategies to increase production, productivity and profitability. Chapter 4 contains information on 32 countries of Asia and Oceania. Chapter 5 contains information regarding 29 countries of Africa. Chapter 6 has information regarding 23 countries of North & Latin America and Caribbean. And Chapter 7 has information regarding 7 countries of Europe. The alphabetical listing of around 4,000 varieties in Chapter 8 will help to know the rice cultivars globally. Rice related terminology is given in Chapter 9. Rice Acronyms and Abbreviations are also given as Appendix, which are used mainly in rice literature. References have been quoted in brackets with superscripts [ ] during text. The figure for rice is given as milled rice and not as paddy or rough rice as reported in FAO Production Year Book or other IRRI publications. In India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan the rice figures are reported as milled rice, which creates confusion while comparing the production and productivity from other countries. The global trade, and rice consumption is always presented in terms of milled rice and not as paddy. USDA reports are also as milled rice. So uniform figure of 0.67 has been taken to multiply from the paddy or rough rice, as milled rice. The main purpose of the book is to bridge the knowledge gap amongst rice researchers, producers, traders, policy makers, and farmers to appreciate the importance of rice in global, national and household food security. There are many countries in world that does not grow rice, but consume rice through imports. The book also provides the extensive coverage of rice cultivation in different countries of the world which is not available as a single source in any book. The rice trade by different rice growing and rice consuming countries are also given. The wild rices provide an enormous opportunity for genetic enhancement through pre-breeding. The rice varieties, cultivars, land races, genetic stocks are used as source of donor or genes is also updated for the researchers in alphabetical order. Many of the varieties having the same name like Asha, Deepti, & Madhuri and released in other states of India, or in other countries have also been documented, which will help the readers to avoid such duplications in future. Some abbreviations are also similar. The disease, insects or other abiotic reactions have been mentioned, so that readers are aware of the problems for location specific Integrated Crop Management (ICM).