Oryza barthii

What to Eat

Edible parts: Seeds, Cereal

The grain is eaten cooked and is used in kreb, a traditional grain mixture consumed in Sudan. It is sometimes sold in local markets.

Where to Find It

A tropical plant. Kano State, northern Nigeria. It grows in water. It grows in shallow ponds. It grows in wet grass savannah. It can be in flooded rice fields. It Ethiopia it grows at about 600 m above sea level.

Africa, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central Africa, Chad, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, East Africa, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinée, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Southern Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, West Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe,

How to Identify

An annual cereal grass. It grows 60-120 cm tall. There are 3-8 nodes. It produces aerial roots from the lower nodes. The stems are spongy. The flower panicles are 20-35 cm long by 3-8 cm wide. There are many flowers. The grains fall off easily.

How to Grow

Requires an open, sunny position. Prefers clay or black cotton soils. Succeeds in deep water, but grows best in shallow water. The plant is often considered to be a weed within its native range, where it is often found growing amongst rice.

Propagation: Seed. The seed of wild rice less than 12 months old often exhibits strong dormancy, which implies (though this has not been established) that the seed retains its viability for a considerable period. Heat treatment is generally effective in breaking dormancy - alternating temperatures between 34°c for 16 hours then 11°c for 8 hours is usually effective, though the time taken varies between species. Surface sow the seed in light shade and do not allow to dry out. Seed should germinate within 7 days at 30°c. Prick out 2 - 3 seedlings into individual pots when large enough to handle and, after a few days, move to a sunny position. Grow on until large enough to plant out.

Other Uses

The plant is related to the cultivated African rice (Oryza glaberrima) and can be used in breeding programmes with both that species and the Asian rice (Oryza sativa).

Oryza barthii, also called Barth's rice, wild rice, or African wild rice, is a grass in the rice genus Oryza. It is an annual, erect to semierect grass. It has leaves with a short ligule (<13 millimetres (33⁄64 in)), and panicles that are compact to open, rarely having secondary branching. The inflorescence structure are large spikelets, 7.7–12.3 millimetres (39⁄128–31⁄64 in) long and 2.3–3.5 millimetres (23⁄256–35⁄256 in) wide, with strong awns (up to 20 centimetres (8 in) long), usually red. The inflorescences have anthers 1.5–3 millimetres (15⁄256–15⁄128 in) long. This wild rice grows in sub-Saharan Africa, and is found in mopane or savanna woodland, savanna or fadama. O. barthii grows in deep water, seasonally flooded land, stagnant water, and slowly flowing water or pools; it prefers clay or black cotton soils (vertisol), and is found in open habitats. It is the progenitor of cultivated Oryza glaberrima, African rice. It has nodal roots hosting nitrogen fixing, photosynthetic strains of Bradyrhizobium. The sequenced genome of O. barthii was published in 2014. This species is one of the AA species, the domesticated rices and their wild relatives.

Production

It is harvested into baskets without cutting.

Other Information

It is sometimes sold in local markets.

Notes

There are about 20 Oryza species. This is a diploid species with AgAg genome.

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