The history of rice cultivation is food for thought

Wang Rongjiang / SHINE

A boy is drawn to the model of a modern farm.

Wang Rongjiang / SHINE

An exhibition on the history and the latest technologies of rice breeding opened on Saturday at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum.

“The Great Rice”, which will run until March 2, 2022, is the museum’s first agricultural science exhibition.

After tens of thousands of years of human evolution and domestication, there are now over 140,000 varieties of rice in the world.

More than 100 varieties are presented in a wall of “seeds”, including Ifugao rice from the Philippines, Fukuminori from Japan and Balilla from Madagascar, as well as different varieties from Yunnan, Guangxi, Jiangsu and other major areas of the country. rice plantation in China.

Wang Rongjiang / SHINE

Farm tools of yesteryear

Wang Rongjiang / SHINE

About 2,000 years ago, symbiotic rice paddy cultivation appeared in China, a method of raising fish and ducks in paddy fields.

It creates a self-balancing ecosystem where the animals provide the natural fertilizer for the rice, loosen the soil and increase the oxygen content of the water, and at the same time the various insects attracted to the rice feed the animals.

Today, advanced technologies have created an intelligent farmland management system, consisting of drones, sensors and a big data monitoring platform. Text, photos and models showing today’s farms are displayed.

There are also interactive games, paintings of farmers and micro-prints on rice by sculptor Zhou Yukun.