How it began
Ponlai rice was developed in Taiwan during Japanese rule (1895 to 1945). Eikichi Iso came to Taiwan in 1912 and joined the Taichu (Taichung) Prefecture agricultural research station in 1914 as a rice improvement technician. He and his colleague Megumu Suenaga kept working on japonica rice although the Governor-General's office had said in 1910 that it would not reward such efforts. In 1923 Suenaga proposed a new way of transplanting seedlings that let a japonica variety, Nakamura, grow on Taiwan's plains. In 1926, at Iso's suggestion, Governor-General Takio Izawa named japonica rice grown in Taiwan horai rice, penglai or ponlai in Mandarin.
Before it existed
Farmers in Taiwan grew indica varieties, whose grains were longer and firmer. The Japanese administration brought in japonica varieties with rounder, stickier grains to suit Japanese tastes, but they flowered too early in Taiwan's climate. Good yields were reached in the mountains with the Nakamura and Edo varieties, while attempts to grow japonica rice on the plains failed. Rice experts in Taiwan were split between improving the existing local varieties and introducing Japanese japonica rice.
How it works
The first step was a change in farming practice. Suenaga's 1923 method shortened the time seedlings spent in the nursery and delayed flowering, which changed the plant's life cycle and stopped japonica rice from heading too early. Breeding followed. Iso and Suenaga crossed two japonica strains and obtained Taichung No. 65, a variety suited to Taiwan's lowland soils. A mutation made it insensitive to day length, unlike its parents, so it could give two harvests a year.
How it spread
Ponlai rice became the most widely cultivated rice in Taiwan. According to Taiwan Panorama, it was at one time also grown commercially in Japan, the Ryukyu Islands, Nepal and Iran. Iso stayed in Taiwan after World War II, taught briefly at National Taiwan University, and then advised the Taiwan Provincial Government on rice production.
What lasted
The research of Iso's period gave wet rice cultivation in Taiwan a scientific basis, and later breeders built on it to improve flavor, aroma and quality. Most ponlai varieties now grown in Taiwan descend from Taichung No. 65. The grain is short, with a stickiness between that of the older indica rice and glutinous rice.
Where it stands today
Ponlai rice accounts for more than 90 percent of Taiwan's rice production. The wooden building on the National Taiwan University farm where Iso worked, built in 1925, is now the Eikichi Iso Memorial House. A graduate teaching assistant, Liu Chien-fu, found Iso's manuscripts there in 2003, and the university library holds more than 4,000 of them.
