Baghdad – Iraqi amber rice is an integral part of the country’s agricultural and cultural heritage, and it is famous for its high quality and distinctive smell, but this unique class faces many challenges that threaten its survival.
The name of the amber rice was associated with superior quality and the distinctive aromatic smell, which is one of the finest types of rice in the world, and it is characterized by its long coherent grains and unique smell that resembles amber and gives it an exceptional taste that distinguishes it from others.
The lands in southern Iraq have always been in its ideal climate, the original home of the amber rice, where its cultivation flourished to become Iraq the main source of this precious product, while historically, the amber rice represented a symbol of Iraqi agricultural excellence and an important source of self -sufficiency and international demand.
But this precious agricultural legacy today faces existential challenges that threaten its survival; Changing climatic conditions and exacerbating the water resources management crises is one of the factors that led to a noticeable decline in the production of amber rice, until it almost disappeared in many regions, which sparked widespread controversy over its current situation and its future.
Do you bid farewell to the amber rice Iraq?
A member of the Agriculture Committee in the Iraqi Parliament, Thaer al -Jubouri, says that the original amber rice has been completely lost from Iraq, noting that its original form is difficult and needs many years.
Al -Jubouri adds in an interview with Al -Jazeera Net that the amber rice is characterized by Iraq without other countries of the world to the neighboring countries, and it is famous for its smell and good flavor, noting that the word amber reflects these excellent qualities.
Al -Jubouri attributes the reason for the loss of the original amber rice to the commercial process and fraud, as farmers resorted to the introduction of hybrid crops to achieve high productivity without paying attention to the quality, which led to the gradual disappearance of the original type.
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It indicates that some of the hybrid varieties carry some of the advantages of the original amber rice, such as the smell of amber, known as the amber of Al -Mashkab.
According to Al -Jubouri, the restoration of the original amber requires years of agriculture and supervision in special fields, and the use of these varieties for the seed process, with special care from farmers to avoid mixing with other crops, stressing that the main reason for the loss of original amber rice is commercial, in addition to the high profit of other varieties compared to the amber, which causes farmers to prefer profit to the quality.
Al -Jubouri says that there is no crop comparable to the Iraqi amber, stressing that the items imported from India and Iran are not compared to the original type in terms of smell and flavor, explaining that the real farmer knows the smell of the original amber that smells of the fields when the crop reaches the stage of the spikes.
The Ministry of Agriculture is surprised
The Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture was surprised by the official spokesman, Muhammad al -Khuza’i, the talk of some about the disappearance of the amber rice, stressing that it is available in the markets and that what is rumored about its disappearance is baseless.
Al-Khuzai said in a statement to Al-Jazeera Net that the last agricultural season 2024-2025 witnessed an expansion of the cultivation of amber rice, and the cultivated areas within the agricultural plan reached 150 thousand dunums in addition to other areas planted outside the plan.
He added that the amber rice is available in the wholesale markets in the districts of Al -Mashkhab and Al -Shami in the Najaf Governorate and in the governorates of Samawah and Diwaniyah in addition to other places, indicating that some traders mix different types of rice and sell them as an amber rice, which causes a state of fraud to consumers, and in return there are trustees who sell the amber rice separately from other types.
Al -Khuza’i called on citizens to distinguish between different types of rice, stressing that those with experience have the ability to do this.
He pointed out that the areas planted with amber rice this year amounted to 150 thousand dunums within the agricultural plan, including 80 thousand dunums in Najaf and 50 thousand dunums in Diwaniyah Governorate in addition to other areas in the governorates of Samawah and others.
In July of last year, Iraq resumed the cultivation of rice after a two -year ban due to water scarcity, and tests a strain from it that consumes less water compared to the strains planted by traditional methods.
Reuters news agency quoted the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Mahdi Sahar al -Jubouri, in July 2024, as saying that Iraq has allocated 150 square kilometers to grow rice last season.
Al -Jubouri’s announcement came after the production ban for two years, which witnessed the cultivation of between 5 to 10 square kilometers of rice annually for the purpose of extracting seeds, amid a water crisis that experts say are linked to the dams that Turkey and Iran built at the sources, low rainfall and other factors related to climate change.
For research purposes
Agricultural affairs expert Tahsin Al -Mousawi confirms that the water crisis that struck Iraq in the past years was the main reason for the shrinking areas of the cultivation of amber rice, indicating that what is currently planted from this category is only for research purposes.
Al -Mousawi says in an interview with Al -Jazeera Net that Iraq was famous for cultivating rice for more than one class, but the distinctive class is the amber rice and was famous for the areas of the Middle Euphrates and the high percentage in the Najaf region and the Diwaniyah Governorate and the rest of the central and southern governorates, indicating that the arrival of Iraq to the issue of water poverty has greatly affected summer agriculture, especially the cultivation of amber rice Rice transplantation.
He added that the cultivation of rice needs large quantities of water and a high flooding percentage that Iraq cannot provide in these circumstances after the incoming of water decreased from water participation countries, explaining that the areas famous for the cultivation of amber rice are the Euphrates basin, which is witnessing a major drought.
He pointed out that the Ministry of Agriculture set a space last year to grow amber, but the lack of control over the designated areas and the lack of compliance with the farmers to put pressure on the Iraqi government, which represented a water crisis that threw its effects on the governorates of Basra and Dhi Qar and the central areas until it reached the outskirts of Baghdad.
Dehydration caused a significant reduction of rice; After the rice spaces exceeded 300 thousand dunums, at the rate of production of 300 thousand tons, in 2023, only 5 thousand dunums were grown and these areas rose to 150 thousand dunums in 2024, according to the statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture.
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Al -Mousawi indicated that the Ministry of Water Resources is now trying to revive the Euphrates basin through the Lake Al -Tharat al -Tharat through the floating pumps, and it tries to reach up to 100 cubic meters per day, although this number is unlikely due to the continued conditions of high temperatures and low water shares, as well as the fact that the waters of the ritual are not suitable even for agriculture due to the high percentage of its salinity.
He stressed that there is a few cultivation for research purposes in order to maintain the variety, noting that Iraq did not use modern cultivation methods through the process of codifying water to preserve this type of main food.
Regarding the stage of the intensity of production in Iraq, Al -Musawi explained that in the 1990s it was the days of the siege on Iraq, as Iraq declared self -sufficiency in cultivation of rice and had a high demand, especially as it constitutes a major source of many countries that wanted to import Iraqi rice.
