Rice plant

Rice plants yield rice, a fast growing crop. While its speed nets a high overall yield per tile per day, each plant gives the least food per harvest, so rice takes a high amount of labor for a given amount of food. Therefore, it is a good option for newer colonies, but may be gradually phased out as a food reserve is established...

Conditions

Maximum growth temperature 58 °C (136.4 °F)
Minimum growth temperature 0 °C (32 °F)
Some Rice plants may die around -13 °C (8.6 °F)
Most Rice plants may die around -15 °C – -18 °C (5 °F – -0.4 °F)
At least 51% light is required to grow.

Growing

Ground Type	Gravel	Soil	Rich Soil	Hydroponics
Fertility (%)	70	100	140	280
Real Grow Time (days)^[1]	7.91	5.54	3.96	1.98
Base Yield/day^[2]	0.76	1.08	1.52	3.03

↑ Actual days to grow, taking into account rest time.
↑ Per plant, assuming Crop Yield Multiplier of 1.0.
Note that Difficulty settings change the Crop Yield Multiplier.

Analysis

Grows quickly, so food supply is less likely to be interrupted by winter. Some or all plants may even die during winter.

Rice plants' daily nutrition is fractionally higher than corn and potatoes (102.7% and 105.4% in regular soil), though rice's greatest strength is its quick growth: the short maturation time makes it ideal for establishing a colony, as an 'emergency' food crop when food runs low, for biomes with short growing seasons, and as a 'last planting' crop when winter is fast approaching. The frequent harvests also mitigate the damage of losing of a crop to blight, cold snap, heat wave, or fire, and provides a steadier flow of nutrition than slower-growing crops. The fast speed also has a use in leveling up the Plants skill.

However, this also means rice requires far more labor to reap and sow for the same nutrition compared to potatoes (183%) and especially corn (366%). While corn gives less nutrition per tile, most colonies can use the extra time to simply plant more tiles of corn, assuming they have the space. Rice is usually not recommended past the midgame unless the colony is limited by growing space (or is otherwise in an emergency).

While rice is no more affected by soil fertility than corn, rice will grow even faster with high fertillity, magnifying the innate strengths (quick food) and weakensses (work) of that fact. While rice provides significantly more nutrition over time than any other hydroponics basin crop, it requires a harvest and replant every other day to do so.

Version history

0.9.722 - added.

[1] Actual days to grow, taking into account rest time.

[2] Per plant, assuming Crop Yield Multiplier of 1.0.
Note that Difficulty settings change the Crop Yield Multiplier.

[1]

[2]

Rice plant

Contents

Conditions

Growing

Analysis

See also

Version history

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