Fateh Pur Sharif Rice Mills

al Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) shows that all forms of paddy rice, both indica and japonica, spring from a single domestication of the wild rice Oryza rufipogon that occurred 8,200–13,500 years ago in China.[1] Paddy fields are the typical feature of rice farming in east, south and southeast Asia. Paddies can be built into steep hillsides as terraces and adjacent to depressed or steeply sloped features such as rivers or marshes. They can require a great deal of labor and materials to create, and need large quantities of water for irrigation. Oxen and water buffalo, adapted for life in wetlands, are important working animals used extensively in paddy field farming. During the twentieth century, paddy field farming became the dominant form of growing rice. Hill tribes of Thailand still cultivate dry-soil varieties called upland rice.[2] Paddy field farming is practiced in Cambodia, Bangladesh, China, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos, as well as Piedmont in Italy, the Camargue in France,[3] the Artibonite Valley in Haiti, and Sacramento Valley in California. Paddy fields are a major source of atmospheric methane and have been estimated to contribute in the range of 50 to 100 million tonnes of the gas per annum.[4][5] Recent studies have shown that this can be significantly reduced while also boosting crop yield by draining the paddies to allow the soil to aerate to interrupt methane production.[6]
The word "paddy" is derived from the Malay word padi, rice plant
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History of Paddy

Archaeologists generally accept that wet-field cultivation originated in China. The earliest paddy field found, dates to 6280 BP, based on carbon dating of grains of rice and soil organic matter found at the Chaodun site in Kushan County.[8] At Caoxieshan, a site of the Neolithic Majiabang culture, archaeologists excavated paddy fields.[9] Some archaeologists claim that Caoxieshan may date to 4000-3000 BC.[10][11] There are ten archaeologically excavated rice paddy fields in Korea. The two oldest are the Okhyun and Yaumdong sites, found in Ulsan, dating to the early Mumun pottery period.[12] There is archaeological evidence, that unhusked rice was stored for the military and for burial with the deceased, from the Neolithic period to the Han Dynasty in China.[13]
Paddy field farming goes back thousands of years in Korea. A pit-house at the Daecheon-ni site yielded carbonized rice grains and radiocarbon dates, indicating that rice cultivation in dry-fields may have begun as early as the Middle Jeulmun Pottery Period (c. 3500-2000 BC) in the Korean Peninsula.[14] Ancient paddy fields have been carefully unearthed in Korea by institutes such as Kyungnam University Museum (KUM) of Masan. They excavated paddy field features at the Geumcheon-ni Site near Miryang, South Gyeongsang Province. The paddy field feature was found next to a pit-house that is dated to the latter part of the Early Mumun Pottery Period (c. 1100-850 BC). KUM has conducted excavations, that have revealed similarly dated paddy field features, at Yaeum-dong and Okhyeon, in modern-day Ulsan.[15]
The earliest Mumun features were usually located in low-lying narrow gullies, that were naturally swampy and fed by the local stream system. Some Mumun paddy fields in flat areas were made of a series of squares and rectangles, separated by bunds approximately 10 cm in height, while terraced paddy fields consisted of long irregular shapes that followed natural contours of the land at various levels.[16][17]
Mumun Period rice farmers used all of the elements that are present in today's paddy fields, such as terracing, bunds, canals, and small reservoirs. We can grasp some paddy-field farming techniques of the Middle Mumun (c. 850-550 BC), from the well-preserved wooden tools excavated from archaeological rice fields at the Majeon-ni Site. However, iron tools for paddy-field farming were not introduced until sometime after 200 BC. The spatial scale of paddy-fields increased, with the regular use of iron tools, in the Three Kingdoms of Korea Period (c. The first paddy fields in Japan date to the Early Yayoi period.[18] The Early Yayoi has been re-dated, and it appears that wet-field agriculture developed at approximately the same time as in the Korean peninsula.[citation needed]
In the Philippines, the use of rice paddies can be traced to prehistoric times, as evidenced in the names of towns such as Pila, Laguna, whose name can be traced to the straight mounds of dirt that form the boundaries of the rice paddy, or "Pilapil."[19]
Wet rice cultivation in Vietnam dates back to the Neolithic Hoa Binh culture and Bac Son culture