Bangkok (dpa) – “Rice is boring compared to wheat,” admits Professor Apichart Vanavichit, one of Thailand’s leading rice genome experts.
Wheat comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes such as bread, rolls, cakes, pastries and noodles, but rice just tends to be served as rice.
But if Apichart and his team of researchers at the Rice Gene Discovery Unit of Thailand’s Kasetsart University get their way, plain old rice – the main food staple of more than half the world’s population – is heading for some exciting new rice forms.
For starters, the university last August launched a new variety on the Thai market called Khao Hom Nin – or “Black Gem Jasmine Rice”, which is being marketed by Kaset Rungrueng Company – one of Thailand’s leading rice exporters.
Khao Hom Nin, like many new rice varieties, was developed by a combination of accident and science.
A few years ago a visiting Chinese rice researcher working at Kasetsart University’s Rice Genome Centre brought with him a high- protein black glutinous rice germ plasm from China.
Experiments with the Chinese rice strain at the university created a mutation, that was taller with longer, non-glutinous, translucent grains still dark in colour.
After two to three years of cross-pollination with Thailand’s famed jasmine rice, or “Khao Hom”, Apichart succeeded in created a new black-coloured variety, which retained jasmine’s cooking qualities of softness, good taste, good smell and yet had a 12.5-per- cent protein content compared with 6.5 per cent in ordinary rice.
The discovery was no fluke.
Apichart has been mapping rice genomes along with 50 other scientists at Kasetsart University for the past seven years, and qualifies as one of Thailand’s leading rice gene experts.
The university’s Rice Genome Centre is part of a 10-country programme joining forces to map out the complete DNA of rice, a project which should be completed within three to four years.
Besides Thailand, the other participants include Japan, the United States, Canada, the European Union, China, South Korea, France, Taiwan and India.
Each participant has been allocated a rice chromosome to study. “We are getting the blueprint of the rice plant, so in the future we can make it better,” said Apichart.
Thailand has been assigned chromosome 9, believed to contain the gene that makes certain rice strains flood-resistant.
This genome know-how is already being applied by Apichart at the Rice Gene Discovery Unit, to study other genes such as the ones that make rice aromatic and delicious.
Despite the obvious applications to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO), so far Apichart and his colleagues have steered clear of laboratory genetic tampering.
All new rice varieties, such as the newly created Khao Hom Nin, have been developed naturally through the process of cross pollination aided by the knowledge picked up in the Rice Genome Centre.
A lot remains unknown.
“We want to know which gene is responsible for iron and protein content,” said Apichart.
That discovery will have tremendous commercial application potential. Thai farmers could be encouraged to grow higher-protein rice for which they could fetch a higher price from rice exporters.
Khao Hom Nin, which has the added attraction of being fast growing and capable of three crops per annum, is already being grown under the university’s supervision by farmers offered a minimum price of about 200 dollars per ton, the same price offered for top quality jasmine.
In August, Kasetsart University entered an agreement with Kaset Rungrueng Company giving them sole commerical rights to mill and market the new, black rice variety.
The university is paid a research royalty fee by the company of 36 dollars on each ton of black rice they buy from farmers.
Apichart is also negotiating with a Taiwanese company interested in making rice crackers from Khao Hom Nin and a Thai company that wants to use the high-protein rice to make rice milk.
Kaset Rungrueng Co’s marketing director Suwannee Ruengvillaya said they will be launching the new black rice in Bangkok supermarkets in October.
“I think there’s a big market for healthy, good-tasting rice,” said Suwannee. “Our company exports rice to more than 100 countries and we have already sent samples of this new rice to Hong Kong and Israel, and they are interested. Israel has already placed an order,” she added.
One problem Kaset Rungrueng has confronted on the marketing front in Thailand is a customer reluctance to buy black rice. To overcome the resistance the company mixes black rice with white Jasmine.
“We found that at first people found the colour strange, but once they start eating this rice they got addicted,” – Apichart is confident the colour prejudice can be overcome.
