WI: Rice in different form...

What about instead of back-breaking labor to bend over and pick rice, the rice formed giganto clusters like bananas. Rice stays the same size but they are in trees and are in clusters. Effects? Any? None? Am I overthinking my trip to Pei Wei?
 

Michael Busch

ASB this, please.

You've just radically changed the entire economy of China for most of the last four thousand years, to start with.
 
Not only that, but this change in herbal evolution might possibly reduce today's poverty by 60%.

And for China? Hell, they'll have such a surplus of rice that they'll be making cheap and efficient rice-powered cars by today- making it a world superpower.
 
Well, for my own correction- basically every rice-rich country would be either more aggressively colonized for their rice, or they would be wealthier countries than OTL.
 
It requires the intervention of extraterrestrials for a plant to evolve in a different way? Biological WIs are not fundamentally ASB.

No, but they do require a fundamental change in evolution very far back and therefore fits into the ASB category (which is'nt just aliens, magic and time travel), not general alternate history.

That said it is an interesting question that I honestly never would have ever considered thinking of.
 
Well, for my own correction- basically every rice-rich country would be either more aggressively colonized for their rice, or they would be wealthier countries than OTL.

You know for most of history rice cultivating countries were the richest parts of the planet.
 
No, but they do require a fundamental change in evolution very far back and therefore fits into the ASB category (which is'nt just aliens, magic and time travel), not general alternate history.

The ASB Forum Description said:
Discuss alternate history scenarios that involve time travel, magic, alien intervention, anything in the sea of time, and other such weirdness. Also alternate histories taking place in fictional universes (Star Wars, etc).

I don't see the timing of the PoD having any relevance whatsoever. There is an element of suspension of disbelief in assuming that humans would evolve in the same fashion given an evolutionary PoD like this, as the butterfly effect would be broad. But it's not that much of a big assumption, and certainly qualitatively different than stuff covered by the ASB label.
 

Typo

Banned
Considering how deeply the cultural, political and economical history (i.e a strong bureacracy is needed to take care of irrigation) of east asia was dependent on rice farming, your change will leave east asia completely unrecognizable.

If rice farming becomes easier, at very least expect the population of east asia to be much much higher, simply because you need to use up less calories to produce the equivalent of more calories in forms of food.
 
If the African varieties of rice are unaffected, then it is likely that the easier-to-harvest Asian clustered-rice will have an even greater and possibly earlier introduction to Africa. With less labour required to harvest the rice, the African population may be larger and not have to devote as much of its time and energy to the production of food.
 

Michael Busch

Topics like this are why we need a seperate board for biological/geological stuff.

I like this idea. I suggested ASB simply because that's a catch-all for stuff that isn't 'plausible' - however we define it - and making rice into something like that described in the initial post just isn't going to happen with natural evolution of rice or any other cereal (i.e. the edible kernel of the rice is the _seed_ of the plant, which is not a _fruit_ evolved to be eaten, and a _grass_ is most definitely not a _tree_).

Changing the evolution of rice so that it does not require nearly as many human-hours of work per calorie requires a POD at the minimum of ~15000 BCE (for some incredibly unlikely freak mutations to make Green-Revolution varieties which have yields two or so times higher than most of the historical cultivars) or many millions of years ago (to change the species into something which does not require planting by hand, for example).

One way to make this a historical POD, rather than ASB or this proposed bio-/geo-POD class, would be to have a successful hybridization program in ancient China (for example). Farmer notices that the shorter rice stalks have bigger and more grains, saves them and grows more, etc., eventually followed by selective breeding, etc. This isn't the rice of the OP, but even having a factor of two less peasants necessary to support the population of China will massively change their society. If it happens very early, there might be less imperial unification, because individual feudal states can afford stronger armies.
 
The other problem is that your hypothetical 'tree-rice' would almost certainly have a much lower yield per area than rice, which is very efficient.
 
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