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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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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.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun
- USDA zone
- Not yet recorded
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Moist · Wet
Vertical layer
Herbaceous- Soil pH
- 5.5–7
- Plant type
- Annual
- Mature height
- 2–3.9 ft
- Mature spread
- Not yet recorded
- Plant spacing
- 8 in
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
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Alfalfa
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Aloe vera
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Trifolium hybridum
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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