RD83 is the new kid on the block.

The much talked about variety Riceberry has shown to be not well adapted to our conditions. It needs rich soil (or a lot of fertilizer) and a lot of and well managed water levels. As we do not have irrigation but rely on monsoon which sometimes is early and heavy or late and sparingly or flooding the fields for a week or two, we need locally adapted robust varieties. It seems also that Riceberry is not very stable and mutates easily making the maintainance of an organic seed-base within our group very challenging.

We have been growing trial plots with RD 83 – a fairly recent development of the Rice Department of Thailand – for a number of years with very good results and have multiplied for commercial usage finally this year.

The first photo shows RD 83 a few days before the harvest. The second photos shows a field at the same time. Yield expectation is similar to Hom Mali under similar field conditions.

The grain long and slim, has a tender silverskin (or black skin as is the case) is very high in the beneficial Autocyans.

If you cook the rice with almost 3 part water to one part rice and after first boiling let it simmer until all water is soaked up (or use a rice cooker), you will get a dark pink, almost black, nutty, buttery kernel that pops in your mouth like ripe berries.