Early Australian Production
Rice was first grown in Australia by a man Isaburo (Jo) Takasuka, a Japanese immigrant who first arrived here in 1905 with his family and fifteen bags of medium grain rice. In 1914 Jo grew Australia’s first successful rice crop in Swan Hill, Victoria and this was the beginning of Australia’s rice industry.

Growth
Rice in Australia takes about five months to grow and these five months are from October to March. The rice plant has two main growth phases. The vegetative phase is the first phase, when stalk and leaves develop. This includes germination, seedling emergence and tillering. The reproductive phase is the second phase. When the rice seeds develop, this includes panicle initiation and heading. Then finally the harvest.
Now rice is not sown by hand but by aeroplane. Fifteen days after germination the young seedlings will appear. Then after one and a half months the rice plant will emerge above the water, this is called seedling emergence. Thirty days later it will grow extra stems from the original stem, this is called tillering. The first tiller (stem) appears when the rice crop has four or five leaves.
Panicle (flowering head) buds start forming inside the main stems of the rice crop during early January, this is called panicle initiation. The panicle buds develop into flowers as they travel up the rice crop and emerge between mid-January to early February. Flowering will start one or two days after the panicle emerges. Each flower opens once for about two hours, usually 11:30am to 1:30pm. During this time pollination (the transfer of the pollen from the male and female part of flower) takes place. A single rice flower has both male and female reproductive parts and can pollinate itself. Under right conditions all flowers on a single panicle are successfully pollinated within seven days. It takes about ten to fourteen days to finish flowering, this is called heading. The fertilised plants then close to become protective hulls which fill with liquid starch (a tasteless part of carbohydrate foods) and protein.

Fertilising

Ripening is after fertilisation and it is divided into four stages – milky, dough, yellow-ripe and maturity. These stages are based on the colour and the texture of the developing grains. It takes over a month to ripen. During this time the liquid inside the hull hardens to make a hard inner grain. This is enclosed in many layers that are rich in nutrients, enzymes and oil. The rice crop is ready to be harvested in about one hundred and fifty days after being sown.

Harvesting

Before the rice growers harvest their rice they check the moisture with a moisture metre. If the grain contains about twenty-two per cent moisture, the crop is ready to harvest. Rice is harvested between March and May. Rice grains are harsh, so the harvesters need to be made out of hard metal such as stainless steel. There are two different fronts used to harvest rice – a stripper front and a standard front. All of the new harvesters have four-wheel drive and big tyres to cope with muddy conditions.