Have you heard about Goa's traditional parboiled rice?

The monsoon rains are receding and the island of Divar is celebrating Bonderam, while Taleigao is getting set for the Konsamchem Fest, that started off with Raia on August 5 and some parishes in Bardez on August 15.

All these celebrations are about the emergence of new ears of rice or konsam. Some people mistakenly call them harvest festivals; but the harvest is in the October-December period marked by Diwali and the Narkasur or Narak Asura, the keeper of Hell or Hades.

The festivals of August involve blessing the fields and praying for a good harvest. The bonderam, or flags, were used to mark the boundaries of the comunidade for the collection of rice tax, known as seistao or one-sixteenth of the yield, later corrupted to shidao in Konkani.

When one speaks of a ‘Green Goa’, the imagery consists of rice fields and coconut trees with its friendly and contented people, relishing pez (rice canji), bhakri, vhodde, san’na, sheviyo, patoleo and dhonnos, all of which are rice products.

The xit-koddi, or rice and curry, is our staple food. The rice was always of the ukdde tandul or parboiled rice. The rice came from local varieties, like Konchri, Damgo, Jirasal, where fresh water flowed; and Asgo or Korgut in the saline soils of the khazan.

These varieties have been largely replaced by the four-month crop of the Jyoti variety (having a brown kernel) or the fifteen days longer duration Jaya variety (that has a white kernel).

Korgut is the best salt-tolerant variety of rice, but its yield of about one tonne per hectare is rather low and uneconomical.

The rice breeder at ICAR-CCARI, Dr KK Manohara, has been working on the Korgut rice for many years. He has developed two ‘pure lines’ Goa Dhan-1 (KS-12) of white grain, and Goa Dhan- 2 (KS-17) of red kernel, both with yields of about 2.6 tonnes per hectare.

He has also created a hybrid rice, Goa Dhan-4 (JK-238), from the cross between Jyoti and Korgut varieties that are popular in Goa. It is a red kernelled rice variety that is short (1.1 m) and can be mechanically harvested.

The new variety does very well under normal rain-fed conditions and yields 3 to 3.5 tonnes of grain per hectare (= 2.5 acres). If water from a pond or tank is available for protective irrigation, it yields up to 5.5 tonnes per hectare.

Farmers across Goa have adopted this variety for the khazan fields as it can be mechanically transplanted and combine harvested apart from having the goodness of Jyoti and salt-tolerance of the Korgut variety.

(The author is the former Chairman of the GCCI Agriculture Committee, CEO of Planter's Choice Pvt Ltd, Additional Director of OFAI and Garden)