Talk:Rice

Rice Exports 2008

Some of the figures in the article must be wrong. The difference between rice production and consumption in china is about twice that the production in thailand.

I realize the figures stated are for different years but there shouldn't be such a great difference. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.116.36.162 (talk) 09:49, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Rice shortage 2008

I was hoping to see an authoritative section covering the underlying causes of the 2008 shortage as well as its impacts. This is a pretty serious issue but does not seem to be mentioned.{{helpme}} . —Preceding unsigned comment added by Papermaker (talk • contribs) 08:53, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

You can just add the information to the article yourself as long as you have a reliable source. But please remember that {{helpme}} is not meant for use on article talk pages. Alexfusco⁵ 11:18, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Isn't it too soon to add a note about the 2008 shortage issue? The sentence is correct: "In early 2008, some governments and retailers began rationing supplies of the grain due to fears of a global rice shortage.[5][6]", but doesn't it narrow the encyclopedic focus of the article unnecessarily at this point in time? If, for example, subsequent developments in the situation suggest that the 2008 shortage is historically significant, then it might be appropriate to add a note about it and perhaps expand as Papermaker suggested above. Yet, we are in the midst of the circumstance right now and that makes it difficult to gain a broad perspective. Just a thought... Glane23 (talk) 20:17, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Article lacks clear nutrition information

Needs nutrition details about each type of rice at each stage of processing. Come on, this is a basic food! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.193.144.79 (talk) 05:09, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I concur with the above statement! Rice is known to have an incomplete protein profile so I came here to see which proteins are missing from it. Lo and behold, no info! Could someone please add which protein is missing from rice?24.83.148.131 (talk) 23:55, 18 January 2009 (UTC)BeeCier

Parboiled rice

As well as the 'Parboiled rice' page, there is a small 'Parboiled rice' heading under the page 'Parboiled'. The info from this heading needs to be brought into the 'Rice' page, along with the info from the 'Parboiled rice' page.

I see no virtue in having 'Parboiled rice' as a separate page, the info from it should be incorporated into the 'Rice' page, as proposed. And - most important - the information from the 'White rice' page should be incorporated too.

The issues connected with white rice, brown rice and parboiled rice are quite controversial. Basically, white rice is created for the convenience of the food processing industry, because it is more easily stored, and therefore more profitable, despite being associated with serious deficiency diseases such as beri-beri for those who eat it!

If 'parboiling' brown rice before milling it into white rice helps to reduce the nutritional loss, thereby allowing the extra profit for processors without such serious harm for the consumers, maybe that's a good thing, although claims about the value of parboiling should be viewed with caution. PandaName (talk) 14:10, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I do not agree: I just looked up parboiled rice in wikipedia to understand what this specifically, is. Being forwarded to a general, and very long, rice page would have been off-putting. --Thomas Tvileren (talk) 13:37, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

This is a complicated discrepancy, and we may want to seek out the opinion of an expert on the matter. Personally, based on my own research, I feel that parboiled rice may indeed deserve its own entry, due to the wealth of information that makes it a unique grain. SuperPooperScooper (talk) 20:18, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Parboiled rice is the rice of choice in South Asia. Parboiled rice comes in various forms, and probably the way to go is a bigger article on parboiled rice, not a merge into rice. ray (talk) 23:05, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Talc Used in Polished Rice

refer to the wiki article on talc and ovarian cancer.

71.127.23.22 (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 19:59, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

The Caribbean

Rice is considered a staple food in the Caribbean, and I am surprised the article does not cover the region. This should be amended. 141.117.148.29 (talk) 19:42, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

"Basmati rice is the oldest, common progenitor for most types."

In case anyone's wondering the reason I removed the above sentence, which is not correct, here is my argument.

The article on the study of the genes of traditional basmati (TB), evolved Basmati (EB), and semidwarf non-Basmati (NB) rice, titled "Genetic analysis of traditional and evolved Basmati and non-Basmati rice varieties by using fluorescence-based ISSR-PCR and SSR markers", can be found here: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=122863.

This article does not conclude that basmati rice is the originator (progenitor) of all or most types of modern rice. What it does conclude is that a) TB varieties are the least diverse compared to EB and NB varities, b) all TB varieties are probably descended from a single land race, and c) "the high level of genetic differentiation of [TB] and NB rice varieties suggests that [TB] might have possibly diverged a long time ago from the NB varieties through conscious selection and patronage."

Since the article only stated that basmati rice diverged from other rice varieties, it cannot be assumed that other varieties of rice diverged from basmati rice, making it the oldest variety.

Also note that basmati rice is one type of aromatic rice, aromatic rice is one type of japonica rice, and japnoica rice is one of the two major subspecies of Asian rice. Therefore it is impossible for basmati rice to be the "progenitor for most types", especially if it is not a member of the other subspecies of Asian rice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.151.166.106 (talk) 08:10, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Useful images found in CCL article

I just found an article which possesses some great rice flag leaf cell images, published in the Journal of Experimental Botany, and all open for use!

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper is available online free of all access charges (see http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/open_access.html for further details)

The article can be found here: [1] , the images would then need to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, of course. TeamZissou (talk) 21:50, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

dates

In the "Korean peninsula and Japan" section it says "In 2003, Korean archaeologists discovered burnt grains (domesticated rice) in Soro-ri, Korea, dated to 13,000,000 BCE. Mainstream archaeological evidence derived from palaeoethnobotanical investigations indicate that dry-land rice was introduced to Korea and Japan some time between 3,000,500 and 1,200,000 BC."

Fairly certain that rice wasn't cultivated in Korea 13 million years ago :P The BBC article referenced for the 13 million B.C.E. date says "15,000" years ago, ie. 13,000 B.C.E. I would have just changed it but there's no reference for the "3,000,500 and 1,200,000 BC" bit, and I am hesitant to just shave off 3 numbers. Someone who knows the actual dates should fix them. 71.178.239.150 (talk) 15:43, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Dodgy figures for rice production

I've removed this table from the article because some of the figures appear to be wrong and do not agree the source. In particular, the figures for Egypt and Tunisia are much too high. The table needs revision and checking before putting back into the article.

Top paddy rice producers–2006 (million tonne or Teragram)
China	184
India	137
Egypt	55
Indonesia	54
Tunisia	51
Bangladesh	44
Vietnam	36
Thailand	29
Myanmar	25
Philippines	15
Brazil	12
Japan	11
United States	9
World Total	635
Source: UN Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) [2]

Enchanter (talk) 06:21, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Merge in the scientific information

Should follow same pattern as Wheat and combine in the biological information from Oryza or Oryza sativa. --MarsRover (talk) 23:26, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

I would do the opposite, because there are two species involved, with somewhat separate histories. In fact, I made a first pass at separating out parts of the section "History of domestication & cultivation" that pertain to each of the two species of rice. To do that properly though will require reading the references. Eg, early rice cultivation in the US apparently was of African rice. --Una Smith (talk) 06:05, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Pidgin English

I don't want to presume to rewrite this on the actual page, but at least I would like to point out that while the rest of this long article is extremely well written (obviously by a British writer, using spellings like "labour" and words like "whilst"), this ONE paragraph is suddenly written in garbled Pidgin English, apparently by a Japanese writer based on the typical types of errors, which he or she must have decided to simply insert in the article. The information is presumably correct, but the English is frankly laughable.

In the Korean and Japanese language, the Chinese character for the rice' (米, kome?) is composed by two eights (八, hachi?) and ten (十, jyū?) which is 88, eighty-eight (八十八, hachi-jyū-hachi?). In proverbial saying in Japan, the farmer spends eighty-eight times and efforts on rice from planting to crop and this is also teaching the sense of mottainai and gratitude for farmer and rice itself.[

What I THINK it means is:

In the Korean and Japanese languages, the Chinese character for "rice" is composed of two eights and a ten, indicating eighty-eight. According to a Japanese proverbial saying, the farmer spends eighty-eight times the effort on rice from planting to harvest. This teaches a sense of gratitude for the farmer, and for rice itself.

My version leaves out the symbols only because I cannot reproduce them on my keyboard.

If my interpretation can be verified, someone is welcome to replace the original with my version, or something close to it.

Billcito (talk) 11:12, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Removal of article content

A good deal of information on rice was removed from the rice article[3][4] and added to the fork article Oryza sativa. Perhaps this should be discussed first since there is also a current proposal to merge the two articles.

Oops. I thought the merge was being discussed on this page, above where I explained why I moved the text. I will join the merge discussion. Thanks. --Una Smith (talk) 02:26, 11 January 2009 (UTC)