Rice - A miracle from Paddy

Rice is one of the major grains of Asian continent. Eventhough there is no clear cut idea about the evolution of rice cultivation it is believed that rice cultivation first started in China. Rice was the main food of China before BC 2800.More than 200 crores of Asian people take in rice as their main food.

Rice is called as ‘Arusa’ in Greek language. It is the transformation of the word ‘Arishi’ , the name for rice in Tamil language of India. It is from the Greek word , the English name ‘rice’ was coined out.

The uncultured rough rice or paddy belongs to the Graminae family of plants. The rice grain consists of an outer protective covering, the hull, and the rice caryopsis or fruit. The dehusked rice is called Brown rice. It consists of the outer layers of pericarp, seed-coat , nucellus and the endosperm. The endosperm consists of the aleurone layer and a subaleurone layer. The aleurone layer encloses the embryo.

The scientific name of paddy is ‘Oryza Sativa’. There are three sub classifications for this. They are Oryza Indica ,  Oryza Jappanika and Oryza Javanika. Paddy has more than seventy thousand ( 7000 ) of items.

In olden days rice was extracted from rough rice by continuous hitting with a wooden plank called pestle. The process was called pounding of rice. But due to mechanisation of all fields modern machines were also introduced for dehusking of paddy.

Rice has some medicinal properties also. The husk seen over the rice contains Vitamin B1 or Thiamin. So those who use rice with husk are less liable for the illness called berry berry. There is a recent opinion that the reproductive ability of those taking rice as main food is very very high. It may be due to the presence of Vitamin E which is an essential vitamin for reproductive activities.