soaked in water, the parboiled rice grains expanded, softened and were ready to eat, surprisingly. Sharma had heard about rice that can be eaten without cooking but for the first time he saw it happen in front of his eyes.There is not much that differentiates an Aghonibora soft rice grain from other rice varieties that grow in India. With a similar grain length and breadth of 5.85 and 2.12 mm, the plant grows 90 cm tall. The parboiled Aghonibora rice grains are yellowish in colour, too. Each grain is 7.65 per cent protein-rich, just like other rice varieties. But the similarity ends here. It makes for a dish of rice that need not be cooked.
Srigopal Sharma, chief scientist at the Central Rice Research Institute (crri) in Cuttack, makes a living by peering at the rice specimens lying in his office which also serves as his laboratory.
Some days he takes a walk in the sprawling rice fields of the experimental plots in the institute. These days he spends his entire time working with Aghonibora, the variety named after aghoni— the months of November, December when it is harvested .
Aghonibora has been grown in Assam for quite some time. During a trip to Arunachal Pradesh in 2007, Sharma made a stopover in a village in the Shonitpur district of Assam. Aghonibora is used as a breakfast cereal there. In fact, a farmer offered him some but its quality was not so good. However, seeing that it did not require any cooking got Sharma thinking about its prospects in Orissa.
“We decided to test the feasibility of growing rice in the hot and humid climate of Orissa, “ said CRRI’s director T K Adhya. The temperature during the grain filling period varies between 16 and 18°C in Assam whereas in Orissa it is between 25 to 28°C. The humidity in Orissa is high—around 70 to 75 per cent. So the real challenge was to see whether it could be grown in these conditions.
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