African and Asian Rice
African rice Oryza glaberrima has been cultivated for 3,500 years and is well adapted to the African environment. African rice has profuse vegetative growth, which serves to smother weeds; it is also resistant to drought, the insect pest African rice gall midge (Orseolia oryzivora), rice yellow mottle virus and blast disease. However, African rice has relatively low yields, because it lodges, or falls over, when grain heads are full. Grains may also shatter, further reducing yield.
Cultivation of African rice has been abandoned for the cultivation of high-yield Asian varieties of Oryza sativa. Asian varieties are poorly adapted to African conditions as their cultivation requires abundant water. Asian rice cannot compete with weeds due to their semi-dwarf phenotypes and are susceptible to pests and diseases in African conditions.
Read more about this topic: New Rice For Africa
Famous quotes containing the words african and, african, asian and/or rice:
“The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The writer in me can look as far as an African-American woman and stop. Often that writer looks through the African-American woman. Race is a layer of being, but not a culmination.”
—Thylias Moss, African American poet. As quoted in the Wall Street Journal (May 12, 1994)
“Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
“To become a celebrity is to become a brand name. There is Ivory Soap, Rice Krispies, and Philip Roth. Ivory is the soap that floats; Rice Krispies the breakfast cereal that goes snap-crackle-pop; Philip Roth the Jew who masturbates with a piece of liver.”
—Philip Roth (b. 1933)