Champa rice
{{Short description|Rice variety}}
{{Expand Chinese|date=February 2022|topic=sci}}
Champa rice is a quick-maturing, drought resistant rice that can allow two harvests of sixty days each per growing season.{{cite book|last1=Haywood|first1=John|last2=Jotischky|first2=Andrew|last3=McGlynn|first3=Sean|title=Historical Atlas of the Medieval World, AD 600-1492|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YQMUNgAACAAJ|year=1998|publisher=Barnes & Noble|isbn=978-0-7607-1976-3|pages=3.21}} Champa rice is from the aus sub-population, which shares similarities with both the japonica and the indica rice varieties.{{Cite journal|last=Barker|first=Randolph|date=2012|title=The Origin and Spread of Early-Ripening Champa Rice: {{sic|I|t's|nolink=y}} Impact on Song Dynasty China|journal=RICE|volume=4|issue=3–4|pages=184–186|doi=10.1007/s12284-011-9079-6|doi-access=free}} Likely originating from Eastern India, Champa rice was introduced from the Champa Kingdom into Song China in the 11th century. Champa rice was then sent to Song China in the 11th century as a tribute gift from Champa during the reign of Emperor Zhenzong of Song (r. 997–1022).Lynda Noreen Shaffer, A Concrete Panoply of Intercultural Exchange: Asia in World History (1997) in Asia in Western and World History, edited by Ainslie T. Embree and Carol Gluck (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe), p. 839-840.{{cite book|author1=Richard W. Bulliet|author2=Pamela Kyle Crossley|author3=Daniel R. Headrick|author4=Steven Hirsch, Lyman Johnson|title=The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History, Brief Edition, Volume I: To 1550: A Global History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=niqhizFDhKUC&q=champa+tribute+rice+india+yields+crop&pg=PA279|date=1 February 2008|publisher=Cengage Learning|isbn=978-0-618-99238-6|pages=279–}} Song dynasty officials gave the quick-growing champa rice to peasants across China in order to boost their crop yields, and its rapid growth time was crucial in feeding the burgeoning Chinese population of over 100 million.{{cite book|last1=Beck|first1=Roger B.|last2=Black|first2=Linda|last3=Krieger|first3=Larry S.|last4=Naylor|first4=Phillip C.|last5=Shabaka|first5=Dahia Ibo|title=World History: Patterns of Interaction|date=2012|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt|isbn=978-0-547-49112-7|page=325}} Champa rice spread with the help of merchants transporting the rice throughout the silk road.