Squatting between cypress trees in the compound is a painted and peeling concrete monument depicting a couple of cone-hatted rice gleaners in muddy relief. Underneath, inscribed in gold Chinese characters is the legend "Bountiful Harvest," flanked by English and Chinese texts entitled "Taichung Native 1" and "Taichung 65." Rather than a memorial to some long lost tribe, the texts tell the tales of two types of rice.
The memorial is on the grounds of the Taichung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station, one of seven rice research centers under the Council of Agriculture (COA). "The announcement of Taichung Native 1 (TN1) was a global breakthrough in 1956," says Sheu Chih-sheng, a researcher at the station. "But its semi-dwarf nature is no longer unique."
At just one meter tall, TN1 was famous for being half a meter shorter than most of its peers, making it easier to harvest by machine and less prone to bending under the weight of mature kernels and rotting in paddies. TN1 served as the inspiration and reference point for the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), a non-profit international rice research center established in the Philippines in 1960, which developed IR8, an even shorter variety.
Although the Taiwanese public is largely unaware of the variety of rice it eats, new breeds with improved and different features are constantly being produced. The credit for these new rice cultivars--rice varieties created through breeding--also goes to the COA's Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute (TARI) in Taichung, which does basic agricultural research. Most of the island's agricultural research centers were established during the Japanese colonial era (1895-1945). The Taichung station came up with Taichung 65 in 1929; the result of crossbreeding two Japanese rice varieties, it is a high-yield, superior quality grain.
Sheu thinks that Taiwan is well suited to crossbreeding, with the indica and japonica Asian rice subspecies coexisting on the island. This situation reflects Taiwan's history. Han immigrants from China first brought long-grain indica rice to Taiwan in the 17th century, and the Japanese introduced the short-grain japonica subspecies to the island when they colonized it. The existence of indica and japonica, and their glutinous counterparts, has blessed Taiwan with a relatively large gene bank on which to experiment.
Variants of short-grain japonica are predominant in the island's paddies, while successful breeds like Taikeng 9, released in 1992, remain popular in the domestic market because of their chewiness. In July this year, one Taiwanese research team suddenly found itself in the limelight when local media revealed that, according to the results of preliminary research work, one breed might be capable of fighting leukemia. Published in the science journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, the finding is the result of comparing six local and two foreign varieties' ability to inhibit the growth of human leukemic U937 cells and induce their differentiation into monocytes. The research team refused to reveal the identity of the breed for fear that it would be unduly hyped up by rice dealers, but it is believed that Taikeng 9 is the one.
Released in 2000, Tainung 71, is a more recent success story. The cultivar features the scent of taro, highly regarded as a sweet food and flavoring in Taiwan, and is derived from a Japanese strain and Taikeng 4, an earlier aromatic created by a COA research station in Hualien in 1990.
"Tainung 71 is a high-yield variety that is less vulnerable to disease and looks better than Taikeng 4," said Wong Liang-tsai, director-general of the Taiwan Rice Growing Association. Better known locally as Yihchuan aromatic rice, its name is taken from Kuo Yih-chuan, the research team leader of the 9-year crossbreeding project who passed away a year before the variety's release.
In recognition of the increasing pressure on water resources, Taiwan is trying to create drought-resistant rice varieties. "Water is increasingly scarce the world over, and the same is true of Taiwan," says Lai Ming-hsing, a researcher in the Department of Agronomy at TARI. A project for producing drought-resistant rice started more than 10 years ago, but was stopped after yielding preliminary results. In response to rising local and global awareness of water supply issues, it was revived two years ago.
Taiwan is home to indica and japonica rice and the many cultivars that have resulted from their crossbreeding. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
Like other countries, Taiwan is becoming more health conscious. The latest development in rice research is the creation of varieties rich in nutrients, according to Sheu. The Taichung research station, for example, is sifting through its library of cultivars to find those containing the most minerals. This direction is being followed by scientists genetically modifying rice at the Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica. The approach, in contrast to the more time-consuming method of crossbreeding, resulted in the creation of a sweet short-grain rice in 2004.
Containing a gene transferred from a heat-resistant bacteria found in Yellowstone National Park in the US, the genetically modified (GM) rice is so named because of its high starch content which easily changes into sugar. Equally important is its richness in protein, which scientists predict will be used as a milk substitute in the future. Yu Su-may, a transgenic rice research fellow at the institute doing sweet rice research since 1998, says that common rice varieties have a 5 percent to 8 percent protein content. The protein content is a bit higher in sweet rice, but the difference is that the bacteria-derived enzymes in sweet rice can help release the protein in the rice to a great extent within a few hours when it is heated. As a result, the flour of sweet rice produced through heating has a 35 percent to 45 percent protein content.
Academia Sinica is cooperating with TARI in growing the rice on its experimental farms for GM crops, and TARI is scheduled to open a new center exclusively for GM crop study by the end of this year.
Taiwan's government still forbids the cultivation of GM crops, even though 21 countries have permitted it since Monsanto, an American company, sold the first Genetically Modified Organism (GMO)--an insect-resistant maize--in 1996. Yu, however, believes that Taiwan will join them sooner or later. "In fact, Taiwanese are already eating a lot of GM foods. Soybeans, for example, are imported to Taiwan from the United States in large quantities and are mostly genetically modified," the scientist says. "Opponents of GM foods presume the worst scenario, but not a single case of GMO-induced damage to health has been reported to date."
Actually the benefits of developing GM crops tremendously outweigh the risks. A highly nutritious GM crop like sweet rice, for example, is expected to alleviate malnutrition in rice-eating nations across Africa and Asia, whose populations account for about half of the world's total.
While half the world may lack nutrient and protein-rich rice, Taiwanese are eating increasingly less of it. They consumed 48.56 kilograms per person in 2004, down from 65.94 in 1990. During the same period, the total area of rice paddies under cultivation shrank from 455,400 to 234,700 hectares, a phenomenal reduction from the historic high of 794,000 hectares in 1962.
"In the past, having a meal meant eating rice, but now people have a wider selection of foods," says Hsu Ai-na. "Even if they do eat rice, they might mix it with other grains. Rice consumption is in an irreversible decline." Hsu researches rice-based foods such as crackers at the Taichung station, whose mission is to stimulate rice consumption.
Local farmers have been exposed to international competition since Taiwan's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2002, albeit the softball variety. As part of its commitment to a free market, Taiwan has allowed rice importation under a quota system since then. Currently imports under a certain quota--in Taiwan's case 8 percent of average yearly rice consumption between 1990 and 1992--are subject to a low tariff, while those exceeding it pay a very high one. The percentage is expected to rise gradually over time and, according to the COA, imported rice now accounts for 10 percent of all that consumed by Taiwanese. The United States exports more rice to Taiwan than any other countries, followed by major-league players Thailand and Australia while Egypt and Japan export little-league quantities.
In the current environment, the focus of rice research has become even more important. "We have to upgrade the quality of Taiwan's rice," says Sheu. In a place like Taiwan where the size of farms tends to be small and farm labor costs are high, profits need to come from quality rather than yield. "We need to use quality to cultivate people's taste for locally grown rice," Sheu says, "so that imports will find it hard to compete."
Lai Ming-hsing is critical of Taiwanese people's tendency to admire anything foreign. "The public needs to have more confidence in Taiwan rice," he says. The scientist specifically refers to imported Japanese rice which is priced very high and typically praised even higher. He thinks locally produced rice, predominantly derived from Japanese stocks anyway, is just as good quality, if not better.