science

RiceTec

RiceTec is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand RiceTec rather than just read about it. In short: RiceTec Inc. is a private American company based and headquartered in Alvin, Texas, that develops and produces hybrid rice seed for the American and various international markets. RiceTec previously owned the consumer brand name RiceSelect which markets Texmati brand rice in grocery stores throughout North America.

Key takeaways

RiceTec belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect RiceTec to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of RiceTec from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

RiceTec Inc. is a private American company based and headquartered in Alvin, Texas, that develops and produces hybrid rice seed for the American and various international markets. RiceTec previously owned the consumer brand name RiceSelect which markets Texmati brand rice in grocery stores throughout North America. The company was founded in 1990 as a foreign for profit corporation and is owned by the Prince of Liechtenstein Foundation.

Hybrid seed rice Development of hybrid rice began in the United States in 1980, as a partnership between the China National Seed Corporation and Ring Around Seed Corporation. These early attempts at growing hybrid rice were met with limited success due to problems in production and grain characteristics. In 1986 Farms of Texas Co. (at the time a large corporate farm) became part of the partnership to help develop better production practices and further research. Farms of Texas Co. was re-formed as RiceTec Inc. in 1990 and formed a partnership with the Chinese National Hybrid Rice Research Center in 1993 to provide RiceTec with exclusive access to Chinese germplasm. RiceTec marketed its first commercial hybrid rice line in 2000, with the introduction of the Hybrid XL6, followed shortly by XL7 and XL8 in 2002. RiceTec introduced its first Newpath Herbicide resistant rice (in a partnership with BASF) known as Clearfield XL8 in 2003.

Litigation

Basmati patent controversy RiceTec became widely known in the late 1990s due to an attempt by the company to patent Basmati rice. Basmati rice has historically been grown in Pakistan and India for many centuries, however neither country had ever patented the particular variety of rice. The claiming of the patent by RiceTec angered many farmers, officials, and NGOs in the region because of this act of theft of intellectual property and vowed to fight the patent, especially since the information provided to Ricetec largely came from the basmati seeds at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. They allowed for duplicate germplasms to be stored in a seed bank in Fort Collins, Colorado. The patent was originally accepted by the US Patent & Trademark Office in 1997, but was officially challenged by the Indian government in 2000 and most patent claims were overturned in the US in 2002. Despite this, RiceTec continues to market their "Texmati" brand of rice as "long grain American Basmati", although no patents or trademarks on the title "Basmati" are currently held by the company (a current trademark is however held for "Texmati".)

Seed quality lawsuit A countersuit (in response to a suit filed by RiceTec for non-payment) was filed against RiceTec on July 6, 2012, in Green County, Arkansas, by Scott Meredith, a rice farmer from Green County. The suit alleged that Meredith had been sold both impure and defective seeds by RiceTec, and also accused RiceTec of negligence, breach of contract, breach of warranty, and violating the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act for misrepresenting and mislabeling its seeds. According to the lead attorney for the plaintiff, the hybrid seed rice he (Scott Meredith) purchased had inferior milling characteristics that hurt marketability and did not yield as was promised by the company. The case received widespread attention in the rice producing areas of the United States and prompted RiceTec CEO John Nelsen to issue a statement rebuffing all allegations and promising to fight the lawsuit. In November 2012, a judge dismissed the claim against RiceTec.

See also Basmati Biological patent Henry Beachell Jasmati Navdhanya Prince of Liechtenstein Foundation

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with RiceTec

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what RiceTec claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to RiceTec before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about RiceTec ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of RiceTec

In research: RiceTec appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses RiceTec in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: RiceTec is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1990 establishments in Texas, Agriculture companies established in the 1990s, Agriculture companies of the United States, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for RiceTec outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study RiceTec in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what RiceTec means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain RiceTec out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is RiceTec in simple terms?

Why does RiceTec matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study RiceTec?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on RiceTec.