page_title: Oryza glaberrima
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Oryza glaberrima / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Growing Oryza glaberrima, or African rice, along the Niger River in Niger. It was first domesticated along the Niger River in Mali.
context_page_description: Oryza glaberrima, commonly known as African rice, is one of the two domesticated rice species. It was first domesticated and grown in West Africa around 3,000 years ago. It is now rarely sold in West African markets, having been replaced by Asian strains.
  While it has been partly replaced by higher-yielding Asian rice, and the number of varieties grown is declining, it persists, making up an estimated 20% of rice grown in West Africa. By comparison to Asian rice, it is hardy, pest-resistant, low-labour, suited to a variety of African conditions, filling, and has a distinct nutty flavour. It is also grown for cultural reasons; for instance, it is sacred to awasena followers among the Jola people, and is a heritage variety in the United States.
  Crossbreeding between African and Asian rice is difficult, but there exist some crosses.
context_section_description: Humans have independently domesticated two different rice species. African rice was domesticated from wild African rice, Oryza barthii, while Asian rice (Oryza sativa), was domesticated from wild Asian rice, Oryza rufipogon.
  Oryza barthii still grows wild in Africa, in a wide variety of open habitats. The Sahara was formerly wetter, with massive paleolakes in what is now the Western Sahara. As the climate dried, the wild rice retreated and probably became increasingly domesticated as it relied on humans for irrigation. Rice growing in deeper, more permanent water became floating rice.
  It is believed to have been domesticated 2000–3000 years ago in the inland delta of the Upper Niger River, in what is now Mali. It then spread through West Africa. It has also been recorded off the east coast of Africa, in the Zanzibar Archipelago.
  Wild rice seedheads shatter, scattering the rice grains to seed the next generation. Domestic rice does not shatter, making the grains easy for humans to gather. A mutation that caused rice not to shatter would probably have been the beginning of domestication.
  Ibn Baṭṭūṭa recorded rice couscous in the area of present-day Mali in 1350.
  In the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Portuguese sailed to the Southern Rivers area in West Africa and wrote that the land was rich in rice. "[T]hey said they found the country covered by vast crops, with many cotton trees and large fields planted in rice … the country looked to them as having the aspect of a pond (i.e., a marais)”. The Portuguese accounts speak of the Falupo Jola, Landuma, Biafada, and Bainik growing rice. André Álvares de Almada wrote about the dike systems used for rice cultivation, from which modern West African rice dike systems are descended.
  African rice was brought to the Americas with the transatlantic slave trade, arriving in Brazil probably by the 1550s and in the U.S. in 1784. The seed was carried as provisions on slave ships, and the technology and skills needed to grow it were brought by enslaved rice farmers. Newly imported African slaves were marketed (and sometimes even trained) for their rice-growing skills, as the high price of rice made it a major cash crop. The tolerance of African rice for brackish water meant it could be grown on coastal deltas, as it was in West Africa.
  There are numerous stories about how the rice came to North America, including a slave smuggling grains in her hair and a ship driven in to trade by a storm. African rice is a rare crop in Brazil, Guyana, El Salvador and Panama, but it is still occasionally grown there. There are also native South American rices, which makes it hard to recognize the arrival of African rice in histories.
  Asian rice came to West Africa in the late 1800s, and by the late twentieth century had substantially supplanted native African rice. However, African rice was still used in specific, often marginal habitats, and preferred for its taste Farmers may grow African rice to eat and Asian rice to sell, as African rice is not exported.
  The 2007 food price shocks drove efforts to raise rice production. Rice-growing regions of Africa are generally net rice importers (partly due to a lack of good local rice-processing capacity) so price increases hurt. Among the efforts to increase yield was the adoption of nerica cultivars, crossbred to specifications from local farmers using African rice varieties provided by local farmers. These were bred during the 1990s and released in the early 21st century. Results so far have been mixed; the nerica varieties are less hardy and more labour-intensive, and effects on real-world yields vary. Subsidies of nerica seeds have also been criticized for encouraging the loss of native varieties and reducing the independence of farmers.
caption: Growing Oryza glaberrima along the Niger River, where the species was first domesticated.
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