458 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1955 



PADDY OR LOWLAND RICE 



As has been suggested above, lowland rice is a unique crop. Most 

 of the principles of agronomy that apply to the usual grain crops 

 do not seem to apply to paddy. Just why this is so cannot yet be satis- 

 factorily explained. The fact remains that rice, if it is grown on a 

 soil that is well puddled and can have a few inches of water standing 

 on it throughout the growing season, will produce some to eat when 

 this soil is too infertile to produce any other grain crop. The puddling 

 of the land eliminates most of the weeds, or at least so reduces their 

 competition that the young transplanted rice seedlings can get a good 

 start and grow well. It is obvious that the puddling materially reduces 

 soil aeration around the roots of the rice plants; nevertheless the 

 paddy seems to get along without aeration of the soil in the usual sense. 

 The transplanting of the young rice seedlings into the fields is a 

 laborious process, but it does insure a considerably greater yield of 

 rice per acre every year than the use of any other method. Soils that 

 are not so poor, but that can produce reasonable yields of upland grain 

 crops, if planted to lowland rice, flooded, irrigated, and weeded, can 

 produce about a quarter more rice grain than other grain crops.^^ 



CONCLUSION 



Humid tropical lowland soils can be used for crop production, and 

 will have to be used more and more as the number of mouths to be 

 fed increases. Lowland rice is undoubtedly the most effective food 

 crop that can be grown on many of these soils, both because it is 

 adapted to wet soils and also because on even very poor soils it will 

 still produce something to eat. But the utilization of rice on an ever- 

 increasing scale in feeding the world calls to our attention serious 

 nutritional problems. No people who eat rice habitually will will- 

 ingly eat it unmilled or even only partly milled (polished) . The flavor 

 of less than fully milled rice is not appreciated. Where increased 

 milling by mechanical means, as power becomes increasingly available, 

 replaces hand milling, beriberi and similar diseases also increase. 

 There is the possibility of utilizing the parboiling system of rice 

 processing before milling to reduce the loss of minerals and vitamins 

 from the processed grain. This is worthy of more serious considera- 

 tion. It is, moreover, a method that has been introduced in the United 

 States for making the so-called "converted" rice. 



This is, indeed, not an optimistic picture, but after 35 years of study 

 of the possibilities and limitations of humid tropical lowland soils 

 and their allied agricultural problems, it seems to me the realistic 

 point of view, namely, that more and more of the people of the world, 

 and especially of the Tropics, will subsist on rice . . . and like it. 



^ .T. Lossing Buck, in a personal communication. 



