DATE: 8/10/05

CONTACT: Dr. Merle Shepard, (843) 402-5398;

Dr. Tom Hargrove, (409) 621-2030;

WRITER: Tom Lollis, (803) 284-3343, ext. 241

Diversity is name of the game for Carolina Gold Symposium

CHARLESTON – If you held a beauty pageant for rice, Carolina Gold would be the winner, according to one expert who has seen rice all over the world.

“I’ve never seen such a beautiful rice in my life,” said Tom Hargrove, a veteran agricultural journalist who spent 19 years with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines . He will be one of the speakers during the Aug. 18-20 Carolina Gold Rice Symposium in Charleston .“The golden husk just glows in the evening light,” he said.

The coastal area of South Carolina was once known as the Gold Coast, all because of the color of a ripening rice that originated in Indonesia and made its way to Madagascar 2,000 years ago. From there it came to Charles Towne in 1685 on a ship bound for New York and forced to find safe harbor because of a storm.

According to Hargrove, Captain James Thurber gave local planters who had entertained him while the storm passed a peck of rice seed which became the foundation of a plantation rice culture that eventually made Charles Towne the richest city in the British colonies.

Highly dependent on slave labor, South Carolina ’s rice industry collapsed after the Civil War. The last commercial crop in the state was harvested in 1927.

Carolina Gold and a sister selection called Carolina White did not disappear, however.

“They are alive and well in South America ,” said Hargrove. He discovered this fact after moving to Colombia in 1992 to take a position with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture.

The two sisters survived thanks to more than 5,000 Confederate soldiers and their families, who accepted an invitation to settle in Brazil rather than surrender to the Union .

“Many of them were from South Carolina , and Brazil wanted their agricultural expertise, which was the most advanced in the world,” said Hargrove. “Obviously they took their seeds with them.”

The names have changed to Carolino Dorado and Carolino Blanco, and they are still grown by subsistence farmers along the Amazon River in Brazil , Bolivia and Peru .

Hargrove will be telling the story about how he and a film crew tracked down the two rices and how their genetic identities were confirmed for an audience at the Rice Symposium, which has drawn the interest of a wide variety of persons.

“This symposium is different from any I’ve ever been to,” he said. “It’s a mixture of historians, people interested in culinary things and plant breeders. All sorts of people are interested in Carolina Gold.”

Gurdev Khush, who was the world’s premiere rice breeder during 34-years with IRRI, is one of them. He doubts that Carolina Gold can become a major commercial variety again because so many changes have occurred in the way rice is grown now.

“The improved version of Carolina Gold, however, has the potential to revive the rice industry in South Carolina on a small scale, at least for cultural tourism,” he said. Merle Shepard, Clemson University researcher, has the improved selection growing in trials at Coastal Research and Education Center .

“It’s shorter and less susceptible to lodging than the taller Carolina Gold,” said Shepard, founder of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation and organizer of the Rice Symposium.

David Shields, McClintock Professor of Southern Letters at the University of South Carolina , holds dual appointments in the departments of history and English. His reading of accounts of game feasts during Carolina Gold’s peak tells of flavors unfamiliar to today’s palatte.

“Because the local ducks fed on the grain in the rice fields, they possessed a flavor that has been lost to the Southern table,” he said. Some symposium events will feature rice-fed fowl and rice-fed hogs as well as rice breads.

“Everyone used to eat rice bread, no matter what their economic class,” said Shields. “Rice bread all but vanished when Carolina Gold ceased to be available and people started buying high-yield, bland long-grain white rice.”

END