As a rice farmer I've never really considered: how much rice can one plant produce.
I suppose it's the scale of our rice farm that has me calculating in acres rather than
individual rice plants.
I know that, on average, we yield 10,000 lbs. of rice per acre.
But how much does a single rice plant yield?
Never thought about it until viewer, Steve T commented on Episode 75, titled "Dissecting
a Rice Plant in Search of its Head" with this question:
"How Many Kernels of rice does the average rice plant produce?"
Well Steve, it's a great question and we're going to find out!
And how we're going to find out is simply by pulling a rice plant and counting the rice
that it's producing.
You see each rice plant produces a seed head, as seen here, and each seed head is comprised
of several spikelets or blooms that are forming rice as we know it.
It's just fascinating, to me, that just one...oops.
That just one of these kernels of rice, or rice seeds, was planted in the spring and
now, at the end of summer, has produced this plant and therefore all these additional seeds
for our consumption or for next year's crop.
But before we find the final number of how much rice this plant is producing I should
mention that a number of factors determine this:
the variety of the rice, the overall health of the plant, as dictated by the level of
fertilization, weather patterns, soil type and ah hum, the farmer.
I should mention that this variety is Calrose medium grain m105.
Now, as I count this rice I thought rather than you just listening to me count 1,2,3
monotonously that I would represent each kernel of rice as a step in which it took to grow
this rice plant.
For example if there were only 10 kernels of rice than I'm going to include 10 farming
operations required to grow the plant, representing each kernel.
You'll see what I mean.
But first let's head into the shop.
Here we are.
Here's the rice plant.
Just let me remove the kernels for easier counting.
Let's move this screen to the top right and add a counter.
Finally let's add our first operation of farming a new crop of rice, which as I explained,
will represent the first rice kernel in our count.
Ready...go!
Alright!
51 kernels of rice, or seeds, that this plant produced.
I can't call it the average for this variety or the average for this field.
I would need to count several more individual rice plants to get that figure and I just
don't have time.
51 grains of rice is just how much this one plant produced but it gives us a good idea
of an answer to Steve's question.
And in those quick scenes we ended our farming operation and crop progress right here at
the plant being pulled.
Again, every kernel I counted was represented in a scene depicting the work that it took
to get this plant to this stage.
By the way, all of those scenes are from past episodes of Rice Farming TV so if you'd
like to know more about what was happening in a particular scene comment down below and
I'll link you to the specific episode.
Well guys what did you think?
Expecting more or less out of the production of these rice plants?
I want to thank Steve for the great question and encourage you guys to keep on asking.
I try to get to as many comments and questions as possible.
Thanks for watching guys.
Give me a thumbs up if you enjoyed this episode and take care!
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