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Tie Cultivation Rice: These facts also favor the theory that the cultivation of rice first became established in humid, tropical, marshy lands. Further, the rice growers of India use the plow and harrow with draft animals, employ mechanisms for pumping water to flood their fields, operate hand mills for making rice flour, as well as many other mechanical devices which were known to the ancient wheat growers and probably invented by them; whereas outside of India, especially in many parts of the Philippines, the cultivation of rice is successfully conducted by hand labor with the most primitive, crude tools conceivable.
Archaeologists consider the evidence now available as suggesting that the cultivation of rice began in eastern or southern India, as a substitute for the wheat and barley prized by their more progressive western neighbors. Although all cultivated rices are regarded as derivations of the original species (Oryza sativa), there are many varietie cultivation rices, India alone cultivating about 1,000 recognizable strains, each adapted to local climatic conditions. In this differentiation of subspecies India leads the remainder of the rice growing area; this is one reason for suspecting that that country was the place of origin for rice cultivation, or at least the center of influence for its diffusion throughout the rice area.
The rice plant grows best in paddy fields [4], although there is a variety that thrives on dry land [5]. Early records refer to Chinese irrigation systems for rice-growing in 770 BC, and in India and the Philippines terraces built 2,000 years ago still support rice cultivation. Today, as centuries ago, rice plants are grown in water until they flower then the field is slowly dried out as the grain ripens. |
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