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    Rice · Rice · Short entry

    Paw San Hmwe

    One of Myanmar's most popular and widely grown aromatic rices, a traditional variety collected mainly in the Ayeyarwady delta. Its grains are short and broad when raw but become slender after cooking, because they lengthen much more than they widen. Many accessions under this name carry a 3 bp insertion in the BADH2 aroma gene that is typical of Myanmar's own aromatic group.

    A pale polished rice grain, illustrated for Paw San Hmwe.
    Paw San Hmwe — editorial grain study, polished, not to scale. Appearance alone does not establish variety or protected origin.

    Short grain, long rice

    In a mapping study, raw Paw San Hmwe grains had a length/breadth ratio of 1.99, but after cooking the ratio rose to 3.57, giving a relative expansion index of 1.79, against 0.76 for the slender Chinese indica Guang 8B. The authors traced most of this to three QTLs on chromosomes 3, 5 and 12, all with the favourable allele from Paw San Hmwe, which appear to act by restraining the grain's expansion in width. Its amylose content was 24.74 %.

    A diversity study of 147 Myanmar accessions found that samples bearing the name are not uniform: some cluster with Myanmar's own aromatic group 5B and others with group 1. The 3 bp insertion in BADH2 typical of group 5B is present in Paw San Hmwe and its derived types such as Paw San Yin and Paw San Bay Kyar.

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