Thailand comes up with new grain to regain export crown as world grows hungry for softer rice

Apart from being a high-yield soft variety, RD79 has been designed to resist disease and tolerate drought better than the country’s traditional grains

For Thailand, rice isn’t just central to its cuisine, it’s the kingdom’s most important crop that supports more than 4 million households

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Workers rake out rice to dry under the sun at the Chai Nat Rice Research Center in Khao Tha Phra, Thailand. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 9:00am, 14 Nov 2020Updated: 9:00am, 14 Nov 2020

Every day, Chuanchom Deerusamee eats thousands of grains of rice.

Her relationship to the grain goes much deeper than her diet. Over the course of her 16-year career as researcher and rice expert at Chai Nat Rice Research Center in central Thailand, she has worked with and grown tonnes of the world’s most popular starch in an effort to create the ultimate version.

She never thought a softer variety would be the answer.

For more than 35 years, since the early 1980s, Thailand was the world’s largest rice exporter, capturing the global market with firm varieties of jasmine and white rice. But the country that exports one-fifth of the world’s rice is in trouble: In 2015, India took the top spot. And in the first half of this year, Thailand slipped to No. 3, behind rival exporter Vietnam, whose softer, plumper varieties are increasingly preferred by some of Asia’s biggest rice consumers, from China to the Philippines.

Long grains such as those in Thai or Indian rice are generally harder than the shorter grains used in East Asian rice bowls and risotto, or rounder grains used in paella or sushi.

Chuanchom’s product represents the potential future of her country’s rice industry. More than half of the world’s population depend on rice as a daily diet essential. For Thailand, rice isn’t just central to its cuisine, it’s the country’s most important crop.