Oryza rufipogon

Oryza rufipogon, known as brownbeard rice, wild rice, and red rice, is a member of the genus Oryza. It is native to East, South and Southeast Asia. It has a close evolutionary relation to Oryza sativa, the plant grown as a major rice food crop throughout the world. Oryza rufipogon is an invasive species and listed as a 'noxious weed' by the United States, and also listed as a noxious weed in Alabama, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, and Vermont. According to the North American Plant Protection Association, O. rufipogon blends in with cultivated O. sativa so well that it cannot be detected. In this position it competes with the cultivated rice and uses valuable fertilizer and space. O. rufipogon sheds most of its seeds before the harvest, therefore contributing little to the overall yield. In addition, the rice grains produced by the plant are not eaten by consumers, who see it as a strange foreign particle in otherwise white rice. A paper on conservation genetics of wild rice in the journal Molecular Ecology has this to say about O. rufipogon: 'This is the most agriculturally important but seriously endangered wild rice species.' In India, the Pallikaranai marshland contains the wild rice Oryza rufipogon, described by the Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON) as a 'precious germplasm.'