As an agricultural country, Sri Lanka has a golden heritage which was commenced before thousands of years. As a staple food rice has shared its immense value with Sri Lankan agriculture. Therefore it is fair enough to introduce rice as “Golden Grains”.The history of paddy has started before 7000 yrs, as a main crop plant which built eastern heritage. Therefore rice plant created its best status as a crop plant in indo-china region. The cultivation of paddy was initiated in china and North-East region of India and as a gift of our grand behavior of unity, paddy cultivation was extended to Sri Lanka.
Most important fact is that the rice built its own culture which has overlapped with Sri Lankan cultural heritage. At an initial stage “Ceylon Farmers” were cultivating traditional paddy varieties, because of the best adaptations to Sri Lankan soil types, climate and geography of Sri Lanka. Due to the well adaptations our farmers could gain best yields from the rice plants.
There were large numbers of traditional rice varieties in Sri Lanka, which are subjected to tolerance of harsh environmental conditions such as flooded conditions, drought conditions, soil salinity, iron toxicity and pest and disease problems. Ex: - “kakulama” which is practiced in dry lands only by using rain water (used for “Alwee” varieties such as “Polal”.)
When considering about Sri Lankan agricultural heritage there are rice varieties which complete their life cycle at different time periods of the year from 2.5 months to 7 months. Categorization of rice varieties is mainly based on the duration of life cycle. Not only that but also according to colour, shape and usages
When considering about paddy cultivation, the most important factor is the rainfall. As a monsoonal country our farmers do cultivations in the main two seasons as “yala” and “Maha”. Our traditional rice varieties were well adapted to different rainfall ranges and our farmers could recognize correctly the suitable rainfall range for different varieties and the suitable season for growing different varieties. Natural selection of traditional paddy varieties for our country under our environmental conditions was one evidence of the self sufficiency and sustainability of paddy cultivation in Sri Lanka, many years ago.
We are usually used to admiring foreign products than ours. This is the point that reduces the quality of our products. As a result of that we make semi-Sri Lankan products which are less suitable to our country.At present we mix with other’s and make our golden grains in to silver grains. This is not problem of new technology and crop improvements problem is missing us by us.
As one of the improvement process, we mixed our traditional varieties with other exported rice varieties. But we have great possibilities to make improvement to our traditional varieties by using good quality combinations of our own traditional varieties for breeding process other than getting the involvement of exported rice varieties.
Traditional rice varieties are one of the important .components of the bio diversity of Sri Lanka ,but still we do not have a considerable gene plasma conservation method for our traditional rice varieties as well as there is no well organized legal manner to prove our complete ownership for these varieties . As a result of that other countries have taken ownership for our varieties and they do conservation of those varieties as their resources. Unfortunately we have already lost many of our traditional varieties due to negligence of conservation and it is high time to conserve the remaining rest in the name of our future generation. If not our country will face the tragedy of having to export the whole rice requirement from the rest of the world. Our farmer has been the main conserver for traditional varieties from the beginning. Active participation in the conservation of traditional varieties is our responsibility for the future of the country as responsible Sri Lankans.
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