Plant · P-682

African Rice

Oryza glaberrima

African Rice is a West African grain crop domesticated from a wild relative along the Niger river around 3,000 years ago, still grown as farmer-kept landraces from Guinea-Bissau east to the Togo Hills. It tolerates drought, flooding, iron-toxic and infertile soils, and outcompetes weeds on its own, which is why it survives where the higher-yielding Asian rice cannot. The trade-off is a harvest that shatters onto the ground before it can all be cut, seed that can sit dormant longer than a grower expects, and a grain tough enough that it is still traditionally hand-pounded rather than milled.