Multifunctionality of Rice Production in Asia: A Synoptic Review by V. Ratna Reddy and Dil B. Rahut. Asian Development Bank Institute, 2023, 125 pages. ISBN: 978-4-89974-279-1

Rice is a staple food for the vast majority of people in the whole Asian region and is significant in ensuring food and nutritional security for the Asia and Pacific regions.Given such significant implications of sustaining billions of people in the Asia and Pacific regions, it is imperative to have a deeper understanding of the production and consumption of rice and its multifunctional aspects, including historical and cultural contexts.In addition, rice production involves intensive use of scarce freshwater and land resources, which has serious implications for local and global environmental conservation.Rapidly changing climatic conditions due to global warming have added further complexity.Integrating food and nutritional security, environmental conservation and climate change with rice production is rare.The present book by two highly acclaimed researchers in the field, Prof. V. Ratna Reddy and Dr Dil B. Rahut, provides a detailed review of the multifunctionality of the rice production system in Asia by integrating the above three dimensions and analyses the complexity involved in assessing both economies and diseconomies of rice production.The book comprises five chapters.In the first chapter, the authors set the context of the book by providing a solid background to the current topic.Using the classifications of ecosystem services by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report (2005), the authors meticulously explain the multifunctionality of rice and discuss the jointness of rice within products and non-products of rice with appropriate examples.This unique approach puts the book in a different league compared to other scholarship on the topic.The chapter provides the relevance of multifunctionality and sets the research study's objectives clearly, as well as the approach followed.The second chapter outlines the importance of rice production in the context of Asia, traces the historical and cultural context of rice, and critically examines the rice farming systems in Asian countries.The historical and cultural context of rice production and consumption, especially from the ancient periods in India and China, the two oldest civilizations in the world, and how it has evolved and become embedded in sociocultural and spiritual aspects of people's lives in both countries, should draw the attention of researchers and scholars in the field.The regional classification of rice production and farming systems based on water regimes, landscape types, agroecological zones, and prevailing temperatures in the region is another important attempt to synthesize and analyze the existence of varied farming systems and an important addition to the current literature and knowledge.In addition, reports on the sheer staggering number of rice varieties grown and/or known across Asian countries since ancient times, the compilation of data relating to trends and patterns of rice production, area, yield, and their changes over time, and in-depth discussion on the economic viability of rice production across Asian countries using the latest data are some of the major contributions of the book.