IRRI Pioneer Potpourri: Merle Shepard on Carolina Gold and Charleston Gold rice

Also see: http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2011/oct/15/charleston-gold/ Merle Shepard (IRRI entomologist, 1984-88; currently professor emeritus and executive director of the Archbold Tropical Research and Education Consortium, Clemson University) on Carolina Gold One of the things that sort of inspired me when I left IRRI in 1988 and went back home to Charleston, South Carolina, is the fact that Charleston was where rice first came into the United States. The major rice variety grown there on huge plantations and making huge fortunes along coastal areas of [pre-U.S. Civil War] South Carolina was called Carolina Gold ( http://www.carolinagoldricefoundation.org ). So, realizing the importance of rice in the region and the many threads associated with history, slavery and so forth, I got interested in Carolina Gold and we started a Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. I'm the vice president and chairman of the Board of the Foundation. On 18-20 August 2005, we held a major symposium [Carolina Gold Rice Symposium in Charleston], which included presentations by many people in the rice world such as Tom Hargrove and Gurdev Khush. But, in addition to scientific presentations on rice, it included information on rice architecture, rice culture, rice history, and so forth. That is one of the spinoffs when you work in a culture where rice is so important. Currently, our laboratory [here at Clemson] is the vegetable laboratory. We share our laboratory with the [United States] Department of Agriculture, a really very nice facility. But we also cover specialty crops and, under that umbrella, I still work with rice. Gurdev [Khush] crossbred some Carolina Gold rice with some of his high-yielding varieties. We kept the "Gold" trait, but incorporated short stature and high-yielding traits as Carolina Gold has a tendency to lodge and fall down during heavy rains and high wind. And now, for the 10th year, we've been screening for what we think is going to be a real winner. We're calling it Charleston Gold, as partly a progeny of Carolina Gold. So, I'm real happy about that and let's see how it goes this season. It does have really good traits, really good taste characteristics, and it will be released as a variety if all goes well.