Research on native rice found near Katherine has received $1.4 million in cash funding.
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The four year project is led by Charles Darwin University and looks to find out if native Australian rice can be farmed and support businesses run by Indigenous Australians.
Lead researcher Sean Bellairs said the team are currently growing three species of native rice at CDU's Casuarina campus and at the NT Department of Industry, Tourism and Trade Coastal Plains research farm.
"One species, Oryza australiensis, only occurs in Australia, mainly south of Katherine," Dr Bellairs said.
"The other two species, Oryza rufipogon and Oryza meridionalis, occur in the floodplains in the Top End and across to Cape York in the east and to the Kimberley in the west."
Dr Bellairs said the researchers are coming to Katherine in mid 2021 to investigate how the rice flowers in the wild.
"We've got some field trips planned, to go and visit some of the sites," said Dr Bellairs.
"We're really keen to go and see it in the wild."
According to CDU, once preliminary trials are completed, the team will scale up to trial commercial quantities.
Dr Bellairs said Oryza australiensis could be grown around Katherine as a low yield, high value crop.
He said it would be a distinctly Territorian product, marketed towards Top End tourism and restaurants.
Native rice would diversify local agriculture and offer an alternative to crops like cotton, which recently missed out on funding in Katherine in the NT budget.
Dr Bellairs said helping Indigenous enterprise to develop and sell these native food sources is an important part of the project.
"Aboriginal enterprises and communities are involved as commercial partners in the project," Dr Bellairs said.
"Our project team wants to see native rice produced as a high value, culturally identified Australian grain giving economic benefit to Indigenous communities and enterprises."
He said the project will provide an economic advantage to remote communities.
Dr Bellairs said evidence found on ancient grind stones shows native rices have been used by Aboriginal communities in Northern Australia for thousands of years.
The trial is funded through the Future Food Systems Cooperative Research Centre, and Queensland University of Technology and NT DITT are involved as research partners.
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