New Rices; New Practices

by JENKIN W. JONES

A GOOD many thing have happened to rice in the past few years. New and better varieties have replaced the old stand-bys on four-fifths of the million-odd acres used to grow rice in the United States. Consumers get a tastier grain. Growers have received higher prices. Yields have been increased or fully maintained. Five improved varieties grown on nearly half of the southern rice acreage in 1945 yielded about 13 percent more than the older varieties, and added 10 million dollars to farmers' incomes.

The higher production helped out materially in the war. Normally, Burma, French Indochina, and Siam supply 90 percent of the rice that enters international trade. When Japan took those countries, a serious food problem arose for several Allied countries that depend upon imports of rice. To help meet the critical situation, production in the Western Hemisphere was expanded from a prewar average of 153 million bushels to more than 225 million in 1945. The largest increases were in Brazil and the United States.

The United States grew an average of 46.6 million bushels of rice on 950,000 acres, or 49 bushels an acre, in the 1930's. In 1945, the production was more than 70 million bushels on 1.5 million acres—an all-time high. But because of continuous cropping of old lands and the use of lands less well suited to rice, our average yield went down 2 bushels an acre during the war.

Rice cannot be grown under nearly so many conditions as other cereal crops. It grows well in sections of Arkansas, California, Louisiana, and Texas where other small grains do not do so well because of soil types, excessive moisture, and high temperatures. Rice is the main cash crop of many counties of the four States.

In each of the States, extensive research to breed better types is carried on. The rice breeder's ideals are kinds that mature early, late, and in between, have stiff straw, are healthy, taste good, yield and mill well, and are suited to various climates and methods of culture.

The most serious fungus diseases of rice in the South (but not in California) are the brown, narrow brown, and blast leaf spot diseases and stem rot. White tip, a physiological disease, is another enemy. In severely infected fields, they all cut yields and lower milling quality. The best controls, as for most other cereal diseases, are the use of resistant varieties.

Before 1912, Shinriki, a short-grain rice, and the long-grain Honduras were the main varieties in the South. Shinriki was introduced by the Department from Japan in 1902. Honduras was introduced by commercial agencies in 1890. Shinriki is late-maturing, short, and stiff-strawed. It tillers freely and produced high yields of good milling quality. Honduras, which matures early, produced well on virgin lands.

Shinriki and Honduras were largely replaced by the more productive Blue Rose and Early Prolific, which have a medium grain, and the long-grain Edith and Lady Wright, all of which S. L. Wright, of Crowley, La., distributed. But they succumb to leaf spot diseases and white tip. Healthier replacements in the South include the long-grain Rexoro, Fortuna, Nira, Texas Patna, Bluebonnet, and Prelude, and the medium-grain Zenith, Blue Rose 41, and Arkrose. Federal and State agencies cooperated in developing and distributing them.

In California, the late, short-grain Wataribune, popular from 1912 to 1920, gave way to the earlier-maturing Colusa and Caloro, short-grain varieties developed and distributed by the Biggs Rice Field Station. They were grown on about 95 percent of the California acreage in 1945.

Of the new kinds, Rexoro and Texas Patna were grown on a fourth of the total rice acreage in 1946. Fortuna and Arkansas Fortuna were grown on 9 percent, Prelude on 5 percent, and Nira and Bluebonnet on about 6 percent. Varieties with smooth hulls are preferred to those with rough hulls for harvesting by the combine-drier method because the smooth-hulled types disperse much less dust during drying. Rexoro, Texas Patna, Nira, and Bluebonnet all have smooth hulls.

Rexoro matures late and has stiff straw. It has long, slender grain, and yields and mills well for a rice of that type. It was selected at the Rice Experiment Station at Crowley from a variety introduced by the Department of Agriculture from the Philippines. Rexoro resists white tip and several forms of narrow brown leaf spot, and is of good table quality. Because of its late maturity, it is grown only in Louisiana and Texas, where the growing season is long.