Rice production history in Asia

Rice grew to be a necessity in Asian cuisine since it was able to adapt the diverse temperatures and regions throughout Asia, beginning in 10,000 B.C. After thousands of years of the same system of production, agriculture was introduced which brought about an abundance of rice in Asia. The first real community of rice breeders generated between 5000 and 4000 B.C. in the southern coastal area at Homutu, China. This brought about a change in the cities to organize their land to properly administer appropriate amounts of land and water necessary to irrigate the land and feed a growing population. Providing large quantities of water in irrigated fields was the key factor to producing a successful field of rice. Over 2-5,000 liter of water are necessary to grow one kilogram of rice. Irrigations systems continued to be built during the Warring period, which began in 770 B.C. and concluded in 21 B.C. With continued construction of irrigations systems, such as the Tu-Cheng-Yen-Dam constructed in the Sichuan Province in 250 B.C., ponds and dams were constructed to reservoir water and impound fresh water. As rice production continued and years passed, rice diversity increased, creating over 140,000 varieties, almost 80,000 of them residing in Los Banos, Phillippines. These varieties have allowed past breeders to meet their demands for rice production and thus are not concerned with the irrigations techniques they have used to produce rice. Preserving water is important in rice production since millions of hectares are used for rice production; over 136 million hectares of land were used to produce rice in Asia in the year 2000.