Rice

Rice and curry is Sri Lanka’s everyday meal, and the ancient irrigation reservoirs of the Anuradhapura kings still water the paddy fields today.

An annual cultivated grass growing to 1–1.5 m, with flat leaves and a drooping panicle in which the husk-covered grains ripen. It is most often grown in flooded, bunded paddies, and on mountain slopes on terraces. Rice needs plenty of water and high temperatures, so in the tropics it yields two harvests a year. There are thousands of varieties, differing in grain colour, shape, aroma and stickiness.

Significance in the country

Rice (bath) is the foundation of Sri Lankan cooking, and for more than two thousand years its cultivation has relied on a network of “wewa” reservoirs and canals built by ancient kings. Every year the first grain of the new harvest is offered to the sacred Sri Maha Bodhi tree in Anuradhapura during the Aluth Sahal Mangalyaya festival.

Where it grows

Grown throughout the country in two seasons – maha and yala; most of all in the dry zone in the east and north, including the districts of Ampara, Polonnaruwa, Anuradhapura and Kurunegala.

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