It is time to move beyond Basmati and explore the potential of other varieties
Though Basmati has dominated the domestic and international market for aromatic rice, it is surely not the unchallenged king of fragrant rice. Many other indigenous varieties of scented rice excel equally as far as aroma and cooking qualities are concerned.
But, unfortunately, these have somehow not got the attention of rice scientists and traders, including exporters, to the extent that Basmati has. As a result, most of this valuable wealth has either already vanished or is on a decline.
The cultivation of non-Basmati scented rice (their number still runs into hundreds) is now confined to limited pockets where farmers grow them either for self-consumption or for special occasions. Only a few of these aromatic rice are traded domestically, leave alone the international market.
One of the factors that sets Basmati apart from other aromatic rice is its long grains. The other scented rice usually have medium to short grains. But then, the global market for long-grained scented rice is only a creation of promotional efforts and not of any natural preference for grain length.
The demand for medium- and short-grain rice is far more than that for long-grain ones. That is where lies the scope for pushing non-Basmati scented rice in the domestic as well as the global market.
Some of the outstanding examples of short-to-medium grain length indigenous aromatic rice are Kalanamak (popularly called, the
