An ancient wild rice may hold genetic secrets for climate-resilient farming – if Vietnam can save it from vanishing and neglect
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Wild rice seeds of the Oryza officinalis variety are grown in the net house of the Mekong Delta Rice Research Institute in Cần Thơ, Vietnam. Expert says that their remarkable genetic diversity make them ideal for breeding climate-resilient rice (Image: Nam Phong / Mekong Eye)
“It’s been so long I can barely remember. It’s delicious, fragrant, soft but not sticky,” says Trần Văn Lựa, 53, a farmer from Đồng Tháp province, south-west Vietnam, recalling the taste of wild rice. As a child, he would harvest the grain during flood season, when wild rice flowers. Today, however, it is a rare sight.
Wild rice, known locally as “ghost rice” (lúa ma), is the common name for Oryza rufipogon, a perennial native to Vietnam’s Mekong Delta and the ancestor of modern Asian rice (Oryza sativa). It carries genes that confer resistance to pests like rice leaf folder moths, stem-boring insects and viral diseases like rice grassy stunt and ragged stunt – traits lost in modern varieties. Its high genetic diversity is a rich resource for scientists to develop new genes that are adaptive to drought, flooding, heat and acidic soils.
As climate pressures mount, these qualities are proving more important than ever. Yet Vietnam, one of the species’ last global refuges, is struggling to preserve it.
A lifeline during flood season
In the 1970s, wild rice was a lifeline during wartime and food shortages. It thrived in the floodplains of the Đồng Tháp Mười region, where seasonal inundation submerged fields for months. A sack of wild rice, locals say, would fetch three times the price of regular rice.
Once abundant, it has since become a rarity, often mistaken for “weedy rice” (Oryza spontanea), an aggressive weed that produces fewer grains, which shed early, causing mass crop failures. The perception of wild rice as a weed has persisted even among international scientific circles, with the North American Plant Protection Organization and several US states classifying it as such.
Vietnam is home to four of the world’s roughly 20 known wild rice species: Oryza rufipogon, Oryza nivara, Oryza officinalis and Oryza granulata. Only rufipogon and officinalis are still found in the Mekong Delta; nivara was last seen in the Delta’s Tràm Chim National Park in 1980, and is now still present in Hồ Lắk, a lake in central Đắk Lắk province.
