[Assam] Ready-to-eat rice from Assam to fix food woes? - Hindustan Times

[Ram Sarangapani]

 >Asked by the government to bring this rice variety out of Assam, the CRRI
will this summer produce enough seeds so that they can be taken to major
rice-growing states

Which is fine, specially if Assam can be the rice-bowl for India. But there
is the question of royalties.  If other states/Center are interested,
then a good royalty contract needs to be in place - whereby Assam benefits
from this, and well into the future.

--Ram

 Hindustan Times*Mon, Jun 14 11:20 AM*

New Delhi, June 14 -- This is even better than a ready-to-eat meal. A rice
variety that requires no cooking has been pulled out of obscurity in Assam -
where it was developed 18 years ago - and it promises to do a lot more than
cut down on your cooking chores. The government hopes it will aid India's
growing food security needs and cut cooking fuel costs since it doesn't
require cooking. The rice type - agonibora - was developed in 1992 by
scientists at Titabor Rice Research Station in Assam, from an existing
Assamese variety called "kumal chaul" or soft rice. "It has very low amylose
content, which makes this rice very soft. It can be had after soaking in
plain water for 20 minutes," said T.K. Adhya, chief of the Cuttack-based
Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI). Asked by the government to bring
this rice variety out of Assam, the CRRI will this summer produce enough
seeds so that they can be taken to major rice-growing states. "Somehow, due
to oversight, nobody knew of it. We are currently multiplying its seeds so
we can get a threshold quantity this year for distribution," Adhya told HT.
Rice is almost entirely made of up starch, which determines it hardness.
Amylose is one kind of rice starch.

India has 44 million hectares of land under rice cultivation. According to
the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation, rice is the staple of 65% of
Indians. Government figures put the country's rice production in 2009-10 at
89.31 million tonnes.