49 Fun Facts About Rice

Rice is the staple food of roughly what share of the world's population?

Over half of humanity treats rice as its staple, yet about 90% of the crop is grown on a single continent, Asia.

What is the scientific name of Asian rice?

Oryza sativa is a single species, yet basmati, jasmine and sushi rice all belong to it: farmers have bred it into thousands of distinct varieties.

In which country was Asian rice first domesticated, more than 8,000 years ago?

China's Stone Age farmers tamed it from a wild grass, and migrants and merchant traders later carried it across Asia and on to the rest of the world.

Besides Asia, which continent domesticated its own species of rice, about 3,000 years ago?

Africa's own rice yields less than Asian rice but is hardier, so breeders crossed the two to create NERICA, 'New Rice for Africa', for poor soils and drought.

In 2023, which two crops outranked rice in world production by weight?

Sugarcane and maize led in 2023, but much of their tonnage becomes sugar, biofuel and animal feed, whereas rice, at about 800 million tonnes, is grown chiefly as food.

In 2023, which two countries together grew more than 50% of the world's rice?

China and India grew 52% of the 2023 crop between them; China, an exporter in the early 2000s, had by 2013 also become the world's biggest rice importer.

Which country overtook Thailand in 2012 to become the world's largest rice exporter?

India took the top spot in 2012 after Thailand's government stockpiled millions of tonnes of rice, hoping to force up world prices; buyers turned to cheaper sellers instead.

What name is given to harvested rice that has not yet been milled?

Paddy comes from the Malay padi, 'rice in the straw'; English later stretched the word to the flooded fields themselves, as a shortening of 'paddy field'.

Brown rice is grain that has had only what removed?

The inedible husk is all that comes off; the bran and germ stay on, which is why brown rice is chewier and takes longer to cook than white.

How is parboiled rice treated before it is milled?

Steamed under pressure after soaking, the grain hardens so it breaks less in the mill, and nutrients are pushed from the bran into the kernel.

Which two starch components give different rice varieties their texture?

Amylose and amylopectin set the texture: the more amylopectin, the more the grains cling, and glue-like sticky rice is almost all amylopectin.

Black rice is nicknamed "forbidden rice" because it was said to be reserved for whom?

The royal family kept it for themselves, the story goes, and it was sent to the emperor as tribute; sellers still trade on the 'forbidden' name today.

Which rice dish, simmered in tomato and chilli, fuels a friendly rivalry between Nigeria and Ghana?

Jollof takes its name from the Jolof, or Wolof, empire in what is now Senegal, so the two rivals are sparring over a dish that most likely began in neither country.

Golden rice was genetically engineered to supply a precursor of which nutrient?

Vitamin A deficiency blinds an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 children a year, so the rice was engineered to make beta-carotene, which the body turns into the vitamin.

A diet of polished white rice can cause beriberi, a lack of which vitamin?

Vitamin B1, or thiamine, is milled away with the grain's outer layers; Christiaan Eijkman found the link when hens fed polished rice fell ill, and won a Nobel Prize.

Rice is suitable for coeliacs because it contains no what?

Gluten is absent even from 'glutinous' rice: that name describes its glue-like stickiness, not the wheat protein.

Which greenhouse gas do flooded rice fields release in large amounts?

Methane is made by microbes that thrive once flooding cuts the soil off from oxygen; draining the fields a few times a season can halve the emissions.

At which stage of growth can a single hour at 35 °C or more leave a rice plant with no grain?

Flowering is the weak point: flowers that spend over an hour at 35 °C or more set no grain, so one heatwave at the wrong moment can cost the whole crop.

Rice blast, one of the most destructive diseases of rice, is caused by what kind of organism?

A fungus causes blast; it can kill seedlings outright, and the grain it destroys each year could feed an estimated 60 million people.

Farmers in parts of Asia traditionally raise which animals in flooded rice fields to control pests?

Ducks and fish eat the pests and weeds and fertilise the crop with their droppings, so one flooded field yields meat as well as rice.

Which two foundations created the International Rice Research Institute?

Ford and Rockefeller, two American foundations, set it up in the Philippines in 1960 amid fears that Asia's population was outgrowing its rice; its new varieties are credited with averting famine.

IR8, the 1966 "miracle rice", owed its success mainly to which trait?

Short, sturdy stems meant IR8 put more of its energy into grain and did not grow tall and fall over when fertiliser was applied, as older varieties did.

Which Chinese agronomist is known as the "Father of Hybrid Rice"?

Yuan Longping's hybrid rice yielded about 20% more than earlier varieties and went into large-scale production in China in the 1970s.

In 2005, rice became the first crop plant to reach which scientific milestone?

Its full genome sequenced: rice went first because it has the smallest genome of the major cereals, which made it the model plant for the other cereal grasses.

Which Louisiana dish cooks its rice in one pot with sausage and seafood?

Jambalaya simmers its rice in the pot with everything else, whereas gumbo is a stew served with rice cooked on its own; one theory traces jambalaya to Spanish settlers attempting paella.

Which sweet, milky drink is made in Mexico from soaked rice and cinnamon?

Horchata in Spain is made from ground tiger nuts, not rice; in Mexico, rice and cinnamon took their place.

Which Korean dish's name literally means "mixed rice"?

Bibimbap joins bibim, 'mixing', and bap, 'cooked rice': the vegetables, meat and egg on top are stirred into the bowl just before eating.

Which noodle soup pairs flat rice noodles with beef broth and fresh herbs?

Pho began in northern Vietnam and travelled the world with refugees after the Vietnam War; English had already borrowed the word by 1935.

Sake makers grow which mould on rice to turn its starch into sugar?

Koji's enzymes break the starch into sugar while yeast ferments that sugar in the same tank at the same time.

Which colony grew most of the rice British America exported before the Revolution?

South Carolina's rice fields were flooded and drained by the river tides, through a system of dikes built and worked by enslaved labourers.

Basmati, the long aromatic rice, is geographically exclusive to which two countries?

India and Pakistan alone grow true basmati, whose Hindi name means 'something fragrant'; a US firm's 1997 patent on 'basmati' lines sparked a diplomatic row with India.

Jasmine rice's fragrance is often compared to popcorn and which leaf?

Pandan leaves and jasmine rice owe their scent to the same compound; it fades fast in the grain, so connoisseurs prize each year's freshly harvested crop.

Which popular risotto rice is named after a small town in Italy's Piedmont region?

Arborio's rounded grains release starch as they cook, which is what makes risotto creamy while each grain stays firm.

Which spice originally gave risotto alla milanese its yellow colour?

Saffron tints it gold; risotto is usually a first course in Italy, but the Milanese version is often served with ossobuco as a meal in itself.

Paella takes its name from what?

The wide, shallow pan it is cooked in is a paella in Valencian, from Latin patella, 'small pan'; over an open fire the bottom layer of rice toasts into a prized crust, the socarrat.

Despite being called rice wine, sake is made by a process more like brewing what?

Beer, like sake, is brewed from grain starch that must first be turned into sugar; wine skips that step because grape juice is already sweet.

Mochi is a Japanese cake made by pounding what?

Short glutinous rice is cooked soft, then pounded with heavy mallets; the cakes are a New Year tradition, and so chewy that choking deaths are reported almost every year.

Onigiri, the Japanese rice ball, is usually wrapped in what?

Nori seaweed keeps fingers off the sticky rice; convenience-store onigiri have a plastic film between the two so the sheet stays crisp until opened.

Congee may be a Cantonese classic, but its English name comes from which Indian language?

Tamil kanji, the water in which rice has been boiled, was picked up by Portuguese traders, written down as canje in 1563, and passed on to English.

The word biryani traces back to which language, once spoken at the Mughal court?

Persian biryan means roasted or fried; the dish itself is thought to have taken shape under the Mughals, when Persian pilau met local spices.

Which company released Rice Krispies in 1928?

Kellogg's elves Snap, Crackle and Pop are named for the noises the crisped rice makes as it collapses in milk.

Which company introduced the first automatic electric rice cooker for homes in 1955?

Toshiba's breakthrough was a double pot: when the water in the outer pot boiled away, the temperature jumped and a thermostat cut the power.

Wild rice is traditionally harvested by knocking the grains into what?

A canoe is steered through the stalks while a partner bends them over and taps the grain loose with wooden 'knockers'; the Ojibwe call this North American lake grass manoomin.

The Banaue Rice Terraces, carved into the mountains by the Ifugao people, are on which Philippine island?

Luzon's Cordillera mountains hold the terraces, which the Ifugao water through channels that harvest rain from the forests on the mountain tops.

In Hindu weddings, rice is thrown into a fire to symbolise what?

Fertility, prosperity and purity are what the grain stands for; in the rite, the bride's brother fills her cupped hands with parched rice to offer to the fire.

Dewi Sri, the rice goddess whose small shrines stand in the fields, is honoured in which island nation?

Indonesia's Javanese and Balinese farmers honour her; in one telling of the myth, the first rice plants sprang from the goddess's grave.

Which US state grows almost all of America's short-grain, sushi-style rice?

California's cooler climate suits the sticky japonica types that Japan and Korea grow, so nearly all US short-grain rice comes from its Sacramento Valley.

Rice farmers practising "alternate wetting and drying" judge when to reflood a field by checking what?

A buried tube, perforated so water seeps in, shows the hidden level; the farmer refloods only when it has fallen about 15 cm below the surface.

In 2018 the WHO strongly recommended fortifying rice with which nutrient?

Iron was the only nutrient to win a strong recommendation in the WHO's first rice guideline; two other additions, one of them folic acid, were advised only conditionally.