Basmati

Description

THE CULTURAL & ECOLOGICAL LIFE OF THIS RICE

The oldest recorded reference to basmati is in the 1766 epic poem “Heer Ranjha,” by the Punjabi poet Wasir Shah, set in the town of Jhang on the east bank of the Chenab in the Punjab:

Mushki chawalaan dey bharrey aan kothey,
Soyan pati tey jhoneray chari day neen,
Basmati, Musafaree, Begumee soon Harchand,
de zardiay dhari de neen…

“Fragrant rice stores are filled in which gold-leafed ordinary rice are being threshed, Basmati, Musafaree, Begumee, Harchand and yellowish rice are stored … [Suthee, Karchaka, Sewala Ghard, Kanthal and Kekala rice are being moved, Fine white Kashmir, Kabul rice dishes which are eaten by fairies and beautiful women….]” [Source]

The 1598 Ain-i-Akbari records cultivation of a red-husked quick-ripening paddy with a fragrant grain, pleasant to taste. This was Mushkin—grown over a wide area but in specific niches and tracts: in subahs (provinces) of Lahore, Multan, Allahabad, Oudh, Delhi, Agra, Ajmer, and Raisen area of Malwa Subah (MP); in Haryana: Panipat (Karnal, Safidon, and Ganor), Jajjhar, Rohtak, Gohana, Hisar, Hansi, Meham, Sirsa, and Rewari. Mushkin among all the varieties cultivated during Akbar’s time fetched the highest price [Ahuja et al., 2019: 207]. Baden-Powell (1892) describing Land record system in Akbar’s time, names “shalay mushkeen” is the Persian word shal-i- mushkin or scented rice, one of the best kinds of bansmatti—making it evident that the mushkin of Akbar’s era was a basmati type. Ramiah later places basmati as a subset of the “scented Muskin group”: “Special mention must be made of the ‘ Basmati ’ group for which there is a great demand from many places in North India.” [1953: 88].

The 1910 Races of Rice in India lists Bansmatti, Bansmutty, Bansmati, Bansmuttee, Basmatee, and Basmati: “a race of rice cultivated throughout the Punjab—said to be the best” but with several other fine variants growing through to Bihar and up to Kashmir; “A rice grown in small areas in the Sirsa district for luxury” (pp. 60-61). Richcharia and Govindaswami will refer to it in 1966 as “Basabati” or “Sanna Machcha Kanta”–the name suggesting the grain’s similarity to a rice from the Jeypore tract in Southern Odisha, Machchakanta (p.212).

Basmati has red, black and golden husked variants, though the red-husked once was prized and the golden husked has today come to dominate. Ahuja et al. (2001) report all three variants being grown even now in Champaran area of Bihar state.

How Basmati came to Dehra Dun: The first Anglo-Afghan war (1838-1842) was between the British East India Company and Maharaja Ranjit Singh against the Afghani ruler Dost Muhammed Khan. Khan was deposed and exiled to Mussorie, in the district of Dehra Dun. It is said he did not care for the local Mussorie rice and introduced an Afghani (or perhaps Punjabi) variety which did better in the Doon valley than in its native realms thanks to soil, water, climate in general. This became the famous Dehradooni Basmati.

4 Basmatis to Rule them all

The rice research station at Doiwala, Dehradun, established in 1921 maintained a local germplasm collection from the Dehradun Valley and areas around Karnal in Haryana. The most widely used rice variety from this collection released for commercial cultivation in 1933 at the Rice Research Station Kalashah Kaku (now in Pakistan) is Basmati 370, known in the trade as ‘Dehradun’ basmati” [Singh 2000: 136].

Then a varietal with a longer grain than Basmati 370 from Karnal, called Karnal Local or ‘Taraori Basmati’ became popular among farmers because it fetched better prices. It eventually replaced Basmati 370 as the national quality check in the National Basmati Trials in 1992 [Singh et al. 2023: 131-2]

Pusa Basmati 1 (released 1989) was the world’s first semi-dwarf, photoperiod insensitive [so could be grown in multiple seasons] and high yielding Basmati rice variety developed from the cross between Pusa 150 and Karnal Local. With its “extra-long slender aromatic grains, lower cooking time and higher linear cooked kernel elongation of freshly harvested rice coupled with potential grain yield of 6-7 tonnes/ha and medium early duration (135-140 days seed to seed maturity)” Pusa Basmati 1 became the variety most sought after by farmers, exporters, and consumers and revolutionised Basmati rice production in India. Export earnings rose from 8,650 million rupees in 1994-95 to 43,450 million rupees in 2007-08 [Singh et al., 2023: 132].

Today 4 basmati varieties set the standard for what combination of characteristics make “basmati”: Taraori Basmati (also known as Basmati 386, Karnal local, HBC-19, and Amritsari), Basmati 370, Type-3 (both known as Dehra Dun Basmati), Hansraj, and Pusa Basmati-1 are the major Basmati varieties. Of these, perhaps only Basmati 370 can be called desi.

Patent wars and Biopiracy

1997: an American company called RiceTec obtained a patent [#5,663,484, “Basmati Rice Lines and Grains”] for a strain of rice called “Basmati 867”—a variety produced by crossbreeding an Indian basmati with an American long-grain. The company claimed exclusive rights over any basmati hybrid grown in the western hemisphere along with:

• exclusive use of the term ‘basmati’, a monopoly on breeding 22 Pakistani farmer-selected basmati varieties with any other varieties in the Western Hemisphere,
• proprietary rights on the seeds and grains from any crosses and the process of breeding RiceTec’s novel rice lines and
• the method to determine the cooking properties and starch content of the rice grains.

2000: RiceTech’s patent was officially challenged by the Indian government. The citation of Wasir Shah’s 1766 poem was important to establishing India’s ‘prior art’ in the development of Basmati, challenging US-based RiceTec Inc.’s patent on this scented Indian landrace.

2002: Most patent claims were overturned in the US in 2002. The US Patent Office ordered that the RiceTech patent be changed to “Rice Lines Bas867, RT 1117 and RT1121”—which the company then rebranded as Texmati, Jasmati and Kasmati. “Missimati” [long-grained rice grown in Mississippi] was later added to the product list.

The Basmati, neem and turmeric patent battles have been critical in determining the need for all India’s TK or Traditional Knowledge to be placed in the public domain, and on written record of all existing agricultural “prior arts” to defend against future biopiracy threats.

Since then, India’s internal GI tags were issued to basmati rice grown in 7 states in the Indo-Gangetic Plains on the foothills of the Himalayas. These states are Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, parts of Uttar Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir. It is yet to win the international GI tags, however—a distinction which Pakistan will no doubt also claim.

NUTRITIONAL AND MEDICINAL PROPERTIES

• Basmati is sometimes described as aiding the body in Fe/Iron absorption, but for this the rice would have to be consumed brown–in a form that greatly masks its other, prized characteristics.
• We think it’s fair to say that the culinary virtues of this rice greatly overshadow and outweigh the nutritional content of its bran.

CULINARY USES

• “A farmer from Uttar Pradesh, the late Shri Meghraj Singh Khokhar of Datiana village, Muzaffarnagar district, described the properties of Basmati rice thus”—in ways most of us would find precisely familiar:the milled rice should be long in length, the neighbours should know that Basmati rice is being cooked in the house (that is, it must be very aromatic), the cooked rice should be as long and slender as a needle (that is, there must be no breadth-wise swelling), a cup of milled rice should result in 5 cups of cooked rice (that is, the kitchen yield must be more than from other rices), the rice should be as soft as freshly-prepared butter, it should be so tasty that you feel like eating more but do not, at the same time, feel that the rice sits heavy on the stomach (that is, it must be easily digestible), it should spread like pearls (that is, the cooked rice must be non-sticky), and left-over rice should not turn stale till next day (that is, it must have a long shelf-life). [excerpted from Singh et al., 2023: 132]
• Basmati’s characteristics are put on exquisite display in dishes like pulao and biriyani, which show off it’s elongated, delicate and separate grains splendidly–adding so much textural marvel and depth of aroma to these spiced and complexly scented preparations.
• Basmati is rarely used for flours or any ground preparations, owing to its cost and the loss of its character in these other forms.
• Many in India will squirm knowing that, in the absence of good rice varieties in foreign markets like the United States, our prized basmati becomes an everyday table rice. But that’s certainly a way to enjoy its unique character, too.

WHO GROWS THIS RICE & WHERE CAN I BUY?

1. Hanuman Chowk market in Dehradun continues to be among the best sources for the famed Basmati–though none of the varieties being sold there are in fact local. They come mostly from Punjab and Haryana, and most had been given trade names like “thilla” and “kasturi,” making it nearly impossible to trace provenance and parentage.
2. Annapurna Farms in Auroville grows and markets a fine “brown basmati” (ie, semi-polished grains), which is this community’s “brown rice” of choice.
3. Other Possible Sources

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

1. Ahuja, U. & Ahuja, Subhash & Thakrar, R. & Rani, N.S. 2008. “Scented Rices of India.” Asian Agri-History. 12. 267-283.
2. Ahuja, Subhash Chander, Uma Ahuja, Siddhart Ahuja. 2019. “History and folklore of basmati rice.” Journal of Cereal Research. 11(3): 206-214
3. Ghose RLM, MB Ghatge, V. Subrahmanyan. 1956. Rice in India. New Delhi: Indian Council of Agricultural Research.
4. Jamil, Uzma. 1998. “Biopiracy: The Patenting of Basmati by Ricetec.” Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy – South Asia And  Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Working Paper Series # 37
5. Ramiah, K. 1953. Rice Breeding and Genetics. New Delhi: ICAR
6. Richcharia, RH. and S. Govindaswami. 1957. Plant Breeding and Genetics volume 2: Rices of India. Patna: Scientific Book Company
7. Robinson, Daniel F. 2010. Confronting Biopiracy: Challenges, Cases, and International Debates. London: EarthScan, 2010. Section on Basmati: pp. 47-49.
8. Singh, A. K., S. Gopala Krishnan, Ranjith K. Ellur, M. Nagarajan, K. K. Vinod, P. K. Bhowmick, H. Bollinedi, E. A. Siddiq, and V. P. Singh. 2023. “Founder of the Rice Breeding Programme at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute.” Review of Agrarian Studies 13(2). 129-135.
9. Singh, R.K., US. Singh, G.S. Khush, Rashmi Rohilla, J.P. Singh, G. Singh, K.S. Shekhar. Small and Medium Grained Aromatic Rices of India Chapter 9 in Aromatic Rices, eds. RK Singh, US Singh, and GS Khush. New Delhi: Oxford and IBS Publishing co. Pp. 155-177.
10. Singh, VP [of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute]. 2000. “Basmati Rice of India,” Chapter 8 in Aromatic Rices, eds. RK Singh, US Singh, and GS Khush. New Delhi: Oxford and IBS Publishing co. pp. 135-154