wild rice, tall aquatic plant (Zizania aquatica) of the family Gramineae (grass family), of a genus separate from common rice (Oryza). Wild rice (called also Canada rice, Indian rice, and water oats) is a hardy annual with broad blades, reedy stems, and large terminal panicles. It grows best in shallow water along the margins of ponds or lakes in the N United States and S Canada; certain varieties grow also in the Southern states. Strains have been developed since the 1970s that are amenable to mechanized cultivation.

The seeds were one of the chief foods of certain Native American tribes, especially in the Great Lakes region. Native Americans of the Algonquian linguistic family, especially the Ojibwa and Menominee, and certain Sioux warred for centuries for control of the wild-rice fields. The Ojibwa called the grain manomin [good berry], and the Menominee are believed to have been named for a variant of this word; it is said to have some 60 synonyms, from which a great number of geographical names have been taken.

Native Americans gathered the seeds by pulling the grain heads over their canoes and flailing them with paddles. The seeds were sun-dried or parched over a slow fire to crack the hulls, then the grain was threshed by tramping, and winnowed. The harvest was traditionally followed by a thanksgiving festival. The seed is harvested today, especially in Minnesota, for the epicurean market and local use and commands a high price. It is still gathered by traditional methods, though it is dried, threshed, and winnowed by mechanized means. The strains developed for large-scale commercial cultivation have been bred for uniform maturation and are grown paddies. Calfornia is the leading produce of these varieties, which are less expensive but often less flavorful than traditionally grown wild rice.

Wild rice is an important source of food and shelter for fish and waterfowl and is sown for this purpose. It is also planted as an ornamental grass in home garden ponds and bogs. The seed is usually sown in the spring; it should first be soaked in water overnight. Manchurian wild rice (Z. caducifolia) is a smaller plant native to NE Asia.

Wild rice is classified in the division Magnoliophyta, class Liliopsida, order Cyperales, family Gramineae.

rice-paper plant: see ginseng.

rice bird: see bobolink.

rice, cereal grain (Oryza sativa) of the grass family (Graminae), probably native to the deltas of the great Asian rivers—the Ganges, the Chang (Yangtze), and the Tigris and Euphrates. The plant is an annual, from 2 to 6 ft (61-183 cm) tall, with a round, jointed stem; long, pointed leaves; and edible seeds borne in a dense head on separate stalks. Wild rice is obtained from a different grass plant.

Cultivation and Harvesting

Methods of growing differ greatly in different localities, but in most Asian countries the traditional hand methods of cultivating and harvesting rice are still practiced. The fields are prepared by plowing (typically with simple plows drawn by water buffalo), fertilizing (usually with dung or sewage), and smoothing (by dragging a log over them). The seedlings are started in seedling beds and, after 30 to 50 days, are transplanted by hand to the fields, which have been flooded by rain or river water. During the growing season, irrigation is maintained by dike-controlled canals or by hand watering. The fields are allowed to drain before cutting.

Rice when it is still covered by the brown hull is known as paddy; rice fields are also called paddy fields or rice paddies. Before marketing, the rice is threshed to loosen the hulls—mainly by flailing, treading, or working in a mortar—and winnowed free of chaff by tossing it in the air above a sheet or mat.

In the United States and in many parts of Europe, rice cultivation has undergone the same mechanization at all stages of cultivation and harvesting as have other grain crops. Rice was introduced to the American colonies in the mid-17th cent. and soon became an important crop. Although U.S. production is less than that of wheat and corn, rice is grown in excess of domestic consumption and has been exported, mainly to Europe and South America. Chief growing areas of the United States are in California, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. The world's leading rice-producing countries are China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Thailand. Total annual world production is more than half a billion metric tons.

Importance of Rice as a Food

It has been estimated that half the world's population subsists wholly or partially on rice. Ninety percent of the world crop is grown and consumed in Asia. American consumption, although increasing, is still only about 25 lb (11 kg) per person annually, as compared with 200 to 400 lb (90-181 kg) per person in parts of Asia. Rice is the only major cereal crop that is primarily consumed by humans directly as harvested, and only wheat and corn are produced in comparable quantity. Plant breeders at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, attempting to keep pace with demand from a burgeoning world population, have repeatedly developed improved varieties of "miracle rice" that allow farmers to increase crop yields substantially.

Brown rice has a greater food value than white, since the outer brown coatings contain the proteins and minerals; the white endosperm is chiefly carbohydrate. As a food rice is low in fat and (compared with other cereal grains) in protein. The miracle rices have grains richer in protein than the old varieties. In the East, rice is eaten with foods and sauces made from the soybean, which supply lacking elements and prevent deficiency diseases. Elsewhere, especially in the United States, rice processing techniques have produced breakfast and snack foods for retail markets. Deficient in gluten, rice cannot be used to make bread unless its flour is mixed with flour made from other grains.

Other Uses

For feeding domestic animals, the bran, meal, and chopped straw are useful, especially when mixed with the polishings or given with skim milk. The polishings are also an important source of furfural and other chemurgic products. The straw, which is soft and fine, is plaited in East Asia for hats and shoes, and the hulls supply mattress filling and packing material. Laundry starch is manufactured from the broken grain, which is also used by distillers. A distilled liquor called arrack is sometimes prepared from a rice infusion, and in Japan the beverage sake is brewed from rice. Rice paper is made from a plant of the ginseng family.

History of Rice Cultivation

Rice has been cultivated in China since ancient times and was introduced to India before the time of the Greeks. Chinese records of rice cultivation go back 4,000 years. In classical Chinese the words for agriculture and for rice culture are synonymous, indicating that rice was already the staple crop at the time the language was taking form. In several Asian languages the words for rice and food are identical. Many ceremonies have arisen in connection with planting and harvesting rice, and the grain and the plant are traditional motifs in Oriental art. Thousands of rice strains are now known, both cultivated and escaped, and the original form is unknown.

Rice cultivation has been carried into all regions having the necessary warmth and abundant moisture favorable to its growth, mainly subtropical rather than hot or cold. The crop was common in West Africa by the end of the 17th cent. It is thought that slaves from that area who were transported to the Carolinas in the mid-18th cent. introduced the complex agricultural technology, thus playing a key part in the establishment of American rice cultivation. Their labor then insured a flourishing rice industry. Modern culture makes use of irrigation, and a few varieties of rice may be grown with only a moderate supply of water.

Classification

Rice is classified in the division Magnoliophyta, class Liliopsida, order Cyperales, family Gramineae.

Rice, Jerry Lee, 1962-, American football player, b. Crawford, Miss. Winning national attention while at the otherwise obscure Mississippi Valley State College, Itta Bena, Miss., Rice subsequently played professionally with the San Francisco 49ers (1985-2001), the Oakland Raiders (2001-2004), and the Seattle Seahawks (2004). One of the game's most durable players, he became the NFL's oldest ever wide receiver and one of its greatest players. At his retirement he held career records for receptions (1,549), receiving yards (22,895), touchdowns (208), and receiving touchdowns (197) during the regular season and season records for receiving yards (1,848) and receiving touchdowns (22). Rice was rookie of the year for the 1985 season, most valuable player for 1987, Super Bowl most valuable player in 1989, and NFL player of the year for 1990 and 1997, and helped the 49ers win three Super Bowls (1989-90, 1995).

Rice, Elmer, 1892-1967, American dramatist, b. New York City, LL.B. New York Law School, 1912. After the success of his first play, On Trial (1914), he turned his interests to the theater. Rice's first major contribution to the American stage was The Adding Machine (1923), an expressionistic play satirizing man in the machine age. Street Scene (1929; operatic version by Kurt Weill, 1947), one of his most compassionate works, is a realistic drama of tenement life in New York. His plays of the 1930s—including Counsellor-at-Law (1931), We, the People (1933), and Between Two Worlds (1934)—continued to express his social and political views. Although Dream Girl (1945), a romantic comedy, was a huge success, his later plays for the most part lack the power of his early works. He was also the author of novels and of essays, some of which were published as The Living Theatre (1959). During the 1930s Rice was regional director of the N.Y. Federal Theater project.

Rice, Condoleezza, 1954-, U.S. government official and educator, b. Birmingham, Ala. A political scientist who has specialized in Russian and E European studies, Rice has been a professor at Stanford Univ. since 1981. From 1989 to 1991 she was an adviser on Soviet and E European affairs on President George H. W. Bush's National Security Council. Subsequently, she served (1993-99) as Stanford's provost. During the 2000 presidential campaign she was George W. Bush's foreign policy adviser, and in 2001 she became President Bush's national security adviser—the first woman and second African American (after Colin Powell) to hold the post. A member of the president's inner circle, she has been an advocate of U.S. military power, a supporter of the Iraq invasion (see Persian Gulf Wars), and a spokeswoman for the administration's assertive foreign policy. In 2005 she succeeded Colin Powell as secretary of state. Her books include The Gorbachev Era (1986, with A. Dallin) and Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (1995, with P. Zelikow).

Rice University, at Houston, Tex.; coeducational; chartered 1891 as Rice Institute through a bequest of William Marsh Rice, opened 1912, renamed 1960. It follows the residential college system and has schools of architecture, engineering, humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, and music. In addition to science and engineering laboratories, Rice maintains an institute for computer services and an institute for the arts. It has a nuclear research laboratory and is associated with NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Until 1965 there were no tuition fees.

Pereira, I. Rice (Irene Rice Pereira), 1907-71, American painter, b. Chelsea, Mass. In 1935, Pereira helped found the Federal Art Project design laboratory and taught there for several years. Her mature painting style is characterized by the play of light and space through open, framelike forms juxtaposed against bands or lines in mazelike patterns. These suspended forms and ambiguous spaces are conscious efforts to express in abstract art the idea of fourth-dimensional space. Pereira experimented with glass, parchment, plastics, and other materials. A representative work is Oblique Progression (Whitney Mus., New York City). She was the author of several books including The Nature of Space (1956) and The Transcendental Formal Logic of the Infinite (1966).

Indian rice: see wild rice.

Carpenter, George Rice, 1863-1909, American educator, b. Labrador, grad. Harvard, 1886. After study abroad, he returned to teach at Harvard (1888-90) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1890-93). From 1893 he was professor of rhetoric at Columbia. He wrote a number of textbooks on literature and rhetoric and biographies of Longfellow, Whittier, and Whitman.

Canada rice: see wild rice.

Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 1875-1950, American novelist, creator of the character Tarzan. He is the author of Tarzan of the Apes (1914) and numerous other jungle and science fiction thrillers.

Atchison, David Rice, 1807-86, U.S. Senator, b. Frogtown, Ky. A lawyer and politician in Missouri, he served in the Senate from 1843 to 1855. As a proslavery Democrat, Atchison was instrumental in having the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed. He is sometimes regarded as having been "president for a day" because he was president pro tempore of the Senate (and next in the line of succession after the departing president and vice president) when, for religious reasons, President-elect Zachary Taylor refused to be sworn in on the Sunday (Mar. 4, 1849) when his inauguration was first scheduled to occur. Atchison, however, neither took the oath of office constitutionally required of the president nor was recognized at the time as temporarily serving as president. After his defeat for reelection in 1855, he was a leader of the border ruffians in the raids into Kansas (1855-56). He supported the Confederacy in the Civil War. Atchison, Kans., is named for him.

Coarse annual grass (Zizania aquatica) of the family Poaceae (or Gramineae) whose grain, now often considered a delicacy, has long been an important food of American Indians. Despite its name, the plant is not related to rice. Wild rice grows naturally in shallow water in marshes and along the shores of streams and lakes in northern central North America. Cultivated varieties are now grown in Minnesota and California. The plant, about 3–10 ft (1–3 m) tall, is topped with a large, open flower cluster. The ripened grains, dark brown to purplish-black, are slender rods 0.4–0.8 in. (1–2 cm) long.

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Japanese alcoholic beverage made from fermented rice. It dates to at least the 3rd century AD. Sake is light in colour and noncarbonated, with a sweet flavour; its alcohol content is about 18percnt by volume. Often mistakenly called a wine, sake is closer in its method of manufacture to beer. Steamed rice is combined with a mold that converts the rice starch to fermentable sugars; the mix is kneaded into a paste, twice fermented (with fresh rice and water added), filtered, and bottled. In Japan, where it is the national beverage and the traditional drink of the Shinto gods, sake is warmed in a small earthenware or porcelain vessel before being blessed and served in small porcelain cups.

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Edible starchy cereal grain and the annual grass (Oryza sativa, family Poaceae, or Gramineae) that produces it. Roughly one-half of the world's population, including almost all of East and Southeast Asia, depends on rice as its principal staple food. First cultivated in India more than 4,000 years ago, rice was planted gradually westward and is now cultivated widely in flooded fields (paddies) and river deltas of tropical, semitropical, and temperate regions. Growing to about 4 ft (1.2 m) in height, rice has long, flat leaves and an inflorescence made up of spikelets bearing flowers that produce the fruit, or grain. Removal of just the husk produces brown rice, containing 8percnt protein and a source of iron, calcium, and B vitamins. Removal of the bran layer leaves white rice, greatly diminished in nutrients. Enriched white rice has added B vitamins and minerals. So-called wild rice (Zizania aquatica) is a coarse annual grass of the same family whose cereal grain, now often considered a delicacy, has long been an important food of North American Indians.

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(born Oct. 13, 1962, Starkville, Miss., U.S.) U.S. gridiron football player. He won All-America honours at Mississippi Valley State University. As a wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers (1985–2000), he was part of three Super Bowl championship teams (1988, 1989, and 1994). Standing 6 ft 2 in. (1.9 m), Rice was larger than the typical NFL wide receiver of his era, and he used his size and strength to overmatch defenders; he was also an exceptional runner. He completed his career in 2005 as the all-time NFL leader in touchdowns (207), receptions (1,549), receiving yards (22,895), and combined yardage (23,546).

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Private university in Houston, Texas, U.S. It was founded in 1891 and endowed by William Marsh Rice. It has schools of humanities, social sciences, architecture, music, natural sciences, and engineering and a graduate school of administration. It offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees in numerous fields.

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(born Sept. 1, 1875, Chicago, Ill., U.S.—died March 19, 1950, Encino, Calif.) U.S. novelist. Burroughs worked as an advertising copywriter before trying fiction. His jungle adventure novel Tarzan of the Apes (1914) became the first of 25 books featuring Tarzan, the son of an English nobleman abandoned in Africa and raised by apes. He wrote 43 other novels.

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