. . . . . "History"@en . . . . . . . . . . "Spring dinner at Monticello, April 12, 1990, in memory of Thomas Jefferson"@en . . . "Ever in search of improvements and innovations in the agricultural life of his country, Jefferson took special interest in importing dry, mountain, or upland rice to replace the cultivation of the coastal rice in America (the swampy plantations were breeding grounds for malaria). He beseeched the Vietnamese Prince Nguyen Anh for the dry rice of Cochin China, with the aid of friend Benjamin Vaughan received from Sir Joseph Banks (influential in English plant exploration and in many ways similar to Jefferson) seeds collected by William Bligh in Timor which failed in America, and finally initiated the collection of a rice that would eventually be successful in Georgia and the south as a household crop - African red rice."@en .