The provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism held a ceremony on November 22 to announce the record and kick off the fifth food street festival.

The painting, measuring 4 x 7 metres, was the result of 30 days' hard work by 10 artisans, aiming to promote the local specialty grain, towards agriculture-based tourism development, said director of the department Tran Minh Ly.

The festival will last until November 27 with 34 booths by businesses and artisans in and outside Soc Trang.

The department said farmers last year planted 332,700 hectares of rice and harvested more than 2 million tonnes with high-quality and specialty varieties like ST24, ST25, Tai Nguyen, RVT, and Dai Thom 8 accounting for almost 92%.

The province has 21 concentrated specialty rice growing areas with a total area of 2,100ha.

ST25 rice won the first prize in the 2019 World’s Best Rice Contest./.VNA