Job's tears (Coix lacryma-jobi), also known as adlay or adlay millet, is a tall grain-bearing perennial tropical plant of the family Poaceae (grass family). It is native to Southeast Asia and introduced to Northern China and India in remote antiquity, and elsewhere cultivated in gardens as an annual. It has been naturalized in the southern United States and the New World tropics. In its native environment it is grown at higher elevation areas where rice and corn do not grow well. Job's tears are also commonly sold as Chinese pearl barley, though true barley belongs to a completely different genus.

There are two main varieties of the species, one wild and one cultivated. The wild variety, Coix lacryma-jobi var. lacryma-jobi, has hard-shelled pseudocarps—very hard, pearly white, oval structures used as beads for making prayer beads or rosaries, necklaces, and other objects. The cultivated variety Coix lacryma-jobi var. ma-yuen is harvested as a cereal crop, has a soft shell, and is used in traditional medicine in parts of Asia.

Nomenclature

Job's tears may also be referred to under different spellings (Job's-tears, Jobs-tears Other common names in English include coix seed, Baijanti (बैजंती) or Vaijayanti (वैजयंती), in Chinese as yìyǐ rén (), was named by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 with the epithet as a Latin translation of the metaphorical tear of Job. , four varieties are accepted by the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families: It has cylindrical, longer than broad involucres. It is widely used as beads for ornaments.

Morphology

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Job's tear is a monoecious grass which is broad-leaved, loose-growing, branched and robust. It can reach a height between 1.20 m to 1.80 m. Like all members of the genus, their inflorescences develop from a leaf sheath at the end of the stem and consist partly of hard, globular or oval, hollow, bead-like structures.

Job's tear seeds differ in color, with the more soft-shelled seeds being light brown and the hard-shelled forms having a dark red pericarp.

The hardened "shells" covering the seeds are technically the fruit-case or involucre (hardened bract),

History

Job's tears is native to Southeast Asian countries, namely India, Myanmar, China, and Malaysia. Residue on pottery from a Neolithic (late Yangshao Culture) site in north-central China shows that Job's tears, together with non-native barley and other plants were used to brew beer as early as ca. 3000 BC. A number of scholars support the view it has been in cultivation in India in the 2000–1000 BC period. The cultivation of Job's tears spreads out to temperate areas in North and Northeast China. The shelled grains exported from China were erroneously declared through customs as "pearl barley", and "Chinese pearl barley" remains an alternate common name so that the grains are sold under such label in Asian supermarkets, even though C. lacryma-jobi is not closely related to barley (Hordeum vulgare).

Uses

Crafts

thumb|Job's Tears used for traditional medicine.

The hard, white grains of Job's tears have historically been used as beads to make necklaces and other objects. The seeds are naturally bored with holes without the need to artificially puncture them.

Strands of Job's tears are used as Buddhist prayer beads in parts of India, Myanmar, Laos, Taiwan, and Korea according to Japanese researcher Yukino Ochiai who has specialized on the ethnobotanic usage of the plant. They are also made into rosaries in countries such as the Philippines and Bolivia.

East Asia

Japan

In Japan, the grains growing wild are called ), and children have made playthings out of them by stringing them into necklaces. However, juzu-dama was a corruption of zuzu-dama according to folklorist Kunio Yanagita. A type of Buddhist rosary called irataka no juzu, which were hand-made by the yamabushi ascetics practicing shugendō training, purportedly used a large-grain type known as . but in Jomon period sites dating to several millennia BC.

Ocean Road hypothesis

Yanagita in his Ocean Road hypothesis argues that the pearly glistening seeds were regarded as simulating or substituting for cowrie shells, which were used as ornaments and currency throughout Southern China and Southeast Asia in antiquity, and he argued both items to be part of cultural transmission into Japan from these areas.

Later scholars have pursued the validity of the thesis. Yanagita had reproduced a distribution map of the usage of ornamental cowries throughout Asia (compiled by J. Wilfrid Jackson), and Japanese ethnologist alluded to a need for a distribution map of ornamental Job's tears, for making comparison therewith.

Mainland Southeast Asia

Thailand and Myanmar

The Akha people and the Karen people who live in the mountainous regions around the Thai-Myanmar border grow several varieties of the plant and use the beads to ornament various handicraft. The beads are used strictly only on women's apparel among the Akha, sewn onto headwear, jackets, handbags, etc.; also, a variety of shapes of beads are used. The beads are used only on the jackets of married women among the Karen, and the oblong seeds are exclusively selected, some example has been shown from the Karen in Chiang Rai Province of Thailand.

Strands of job's tears necklaces have also been collected from Chiang Rai Province, Thailand and it is known the Karen people string the beads into necklaces, such necklaces in use also in the former Karenni States (current Kayah State of Burma), with the crop being known by the name cheik (var. kyeik, kayeik, kyeit) in Burmese. Job's tears necklace has been collected also from Yunnan Province, China, The Kayan of Borneo also use job's tears to decorate clothing and war dress.

Some of the soft-shelled types are easily threshed, producing sweet kernels. The threshed (and polished

The grains of Job's tear can be used the same way as rice. It can be eaten cooked or even raw, as it has a slightly sweet taste. Further, the grains can be used for the production of flour.

Job's tear grains can be processed in the same machine as rice. For the soft hulls, it is enough to press them over a sieve. The advantage of Job's tear over rice is that the grains do not need to be polished, as is the case with rice. Through this process, the rice loses its vitamins. This makes Job's tear a valuable food for undernourished populations in rural areas. The hatomugi kōhī ("jobs tears coffee") apparently refers to coffee dripped with hatomugi tea instead of plain hot water.

In southern China, Job's tears are often used in tong sui (糖水), a sweet dessert soup. One variety is called ching bo leung in Cantonese (), and is also known as sâm bổ lượng in Vietnamese cuisine. There is also a braised chicken dish yimidunji ().

Alcoholic beverages

In both Korea and China, distilled liquors are also made from the grain. One Korean liquor is called okroju (옥로주; hanja: 玉露酒), which is made from rice and Job's tears. The grains are also brewed into beers in northeast India and other parts of southeast Asia.

The plant is noted in an ancient medical text Huangdi Neijing (5th–2nd centuries BCE) attributed to the legendary Huangdi (Yellow Emperor), but fails to be noticed in the standard traditional materia medica reference Bencao Gangmu (本草綱目)(16c.).

Cultivation requirements

Soil and climate requirement

It is generally grown in sunny, fertile, well-drained fields with sandy loam soil. Adlay likes mild, cool and humid climate. It does not adapt to hot and muggy climate, has low cold tolerance, and is very intolerant of drought. Black-shelled adlay is suitable for planting in areas with altitudes of 800 to 1,000 m; dwarf adlay varieties are suitable for planting in low altitude areas.

Planting can be done when the ground temperature is above 12&nbsp;°C. And if it is not frost, sowing should be done as early as possible to lengthen the required days to emergence and days to anthesis. Adlay sowing is divided into strip sowing and hole sowing. The strip sowing refers to the uniform sowing of seeds in trenches with a spacing of about 50&nbsp;cm and a depth of 4–5&nbsp;cm. Hole sowing refers to sowing seeds in holes 3–5&nbsp;cm deep, with 3-4 seeds per hole.

Cultivation management

Control the number of seedlings per hole when the seedlings have 3–4 true leaves, and leave 2–3 well-grown plants in each hole.

Tillage at least 3 times during the whole crop growth. The 1st tillage is to be done when the seedlings are 5–10&nbsp;cm high and needs to be cleaned of weeds to promote tillering. The second tillage is done when the seedlings are 15–20&nbsp;cm high. The third plowing is done when the seedlings are 30&nbsp;cm high, combined with fertilizer and soil cultivation to promote root growth and prevent collapse. The application of N fertilizer can significantly improve the yield of adlay.

Drought is a major stress for adlay growth and development. The lack of moisture will cause impaired germination and poor establishment. During the growth and maturation stage, water deficits will reduce the leaf area index and lead to barrenness, which negatively affects photosynthesis and dry matter production.

Harvest and post-harvest operations

When nearly 80% of adlay grains turn brown, the panicle will be harvested by cutting the stems and leaving three nodes above the ground. The harvest period varies with the different varieties and local environment. Because of the uneven height and grain distribution, the use of machines for harvesting is limited and harvesting has been done by hand in many regions in Southeastern Asia. Then the harvested panicles are threshed by hand or using a treadle thresher. For manual threshing, it is normally used when the harvested grains are at lower moisture content and easily shatter. Threshed grains are sun dried or placed in drying facilities where they utilize forced warm air to gradually reduce the moisture content to 14% suited to storage before the adlay moves to the milling process. The adlay can be consumed as grains and flour after being milled through corn and rice mill. The milling recovery is about 60%

Early maturing varieties are sown in early March, middle maturing varieties are sown from late March to early April, and late maturing varieties are sown from late April to early May. Sowing should be early rather than late. If sowing is too late, it will affect the yield and even the seeds can not mature after autumn. The seeds are used as ingredients to make soup, porridge, flour and pastries. It is common to grind seeds into powder form to make pastries. Two major methods are used to isolate starch: alkaline steeping method and steeping with sodium metabisulfite (), an antioxidant and antimicrobial agent. Job's tears also contain edible protein (14.8%), which can be extracted through an alkaline extraction method and a salt extraction method.

  • stem borers Sesamia inferens and Ostrinia furnacalis
  • rice skipper Pelopidas mathias (leaf feeder)
  • thrip Chaetanaphothrips orchidii
  • aphid Rhopalosiphum maidis
  • woolly aphid Ceratovacuna lanigera

It is susceptible to leaf blight.

<gallery widths=180>

An unripened head of Job's Tears.jpg|An unripened head of Job's Tears

Bhirgaudi Nepali.JPG|C. lacryma-jobi plant with flowers and fruit in Nepal

Yulmu (Coix lacryma-jobi var. ma-yuen).jpg|Job's tears grains

Yulmucha (Job's tears tea).jpg|Yulmu-cha (Job's tears tea) from Korea

Yulmu-bap.jpg|Yulmu-bap (Job's tears rice) from Korea

Leiden University Library - Seikei Zusetsu vol. 20, page 011 - 薏苡 - Coix lacryma-jobi L., 1804.jpg|Illustration of Coix lacryma-jobi from the Japanese encyclopedia Seikei Zusetsu (1804)

Coix lacryma-jobi.jpg|C. lacryma-jobi seeds in a necklace prepared in the Zulu tradition

Coix lacryma-jobi MHNT.BOT.2016.12.1.jpg|Coix lacryma-jobi - MHNT

</gallery>

Explanatory notes

References

Bibliography

  • Yanagita, Kunio (1950). "Takaragai no koto 宝貝のこと". Bunka Okinawa<!--『文化沖縄』--> 2 (7)
  • —— (1953). "Hito to zuzudama 人とズズダマ". Shizen to bunka<!--『自然と文化』--> (3)
  • . plain text @ aozora
  • . plain text @ aozora
  • Job's Tears on Wayne's Word
  • Sorting Coix names
  • Edible Medicinal and Non-Medicinal Plants: Volume 5, Fruits, TK Lim, 2013