Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
  • Submit
  • About
    • Editorial Board
    • PNAS Staff
    • FAQ
    • Accessibility Statement
    • Rights and Permissions
    • Site Map
  • Contact
  • Journal Club
  • Subscribe
    • Subscription Rates
    • Subscriptions FAQ
    • Open Access
    • Recommend PNAS to Your Librarian

User menu

  • Log in
  • My Cart

Search

  • Advanced search
Home
Home
  • Log in
  • My Cart

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
Perspective

Archaeological and genetic insights into the origins of domesticated rice

Briana L. Gross and Zhijun Zhao
  1. aBiology Department, University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, MN 55812; and
  2. bInstitute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 100710, China

See allHide authors and affiliations

PNAS April 29, 2014 111 (17) 6190-6197; first published April 21, 2014; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1308942110
Briana L. Gross
aBiology Department, University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, MN 55812; and
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: blgross@d.umn.edu
Zhijun Zhao
bInstitute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 100710, China
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  1. Edited by Dolores R. Piperno, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Washington, DC, and approved November 4, 2013 (received for review June 28, 2013)

  • Article
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Abstract

Rice (Oryza sativa) is one of the most important cereal grains in the world today and serves as a staple food source for more than half of the world’s population. Research into when, where, and how rice was brought into cultivation and eventually domesticated, along with its development into a staple food source, is thus essential. These questions have been a point of nearly continuous research in both archaeology and genetics, and new information has continually come to light as theory, data acquisition, and analytical techniques have advanced over time. Here, we review the broad history of our scientific understanding of the rice domestication process from both an archaeological and genetic perspective and examine in detail the information that has come to light in both of these fields in the last 10 y. Current findings from genetics and archaeology are consistent with the domestication of O. sativa japonica in the Yangtze River valley of southern China. Interestingly, although it appears rice was cultivated in the area by as early 8000 BP, the key domestication trait of nonshattering was not fixed for another 1,000 y or perhaps longer. Rice was also cultivated in India as early as 5000 BP, but the domesticated indica subspecies currently appears to be a product of the introgression of favorable alleles from japonica. These findings are reshaping our understanding of rice domestication and also have implications for understanding the complex evolutionary process of plant domestication.

  • Oryza rufipogon
  • Oryza nivara
  • domestication gene

Footnotes

  • ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: blgross{at}d.umn.edu.
  • Author contributions: B.L.G. and Z.Z. wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

  • This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

View Full Text
PreviousNext
Back to top
Article Alerts
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on PNAS.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Archaeological and genetic insights into the origins of domesticated rice
(Your Name) has sent you a message from PNAS
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the PNAS web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Rice domestication
Briana L. Gross, Zhijun Zhao
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Apr 2014, 111 (17) 6190-6197; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1308942110

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Request Permissions
Share
Rice domestication
Briana L. Gross, Zhijun Zhao
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Apr 2014, 111 (17) 6190-6197; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1308942110
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley

Article Classifications

  • Biological Sciences
  • Evolution
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 111 (17)
Table of Contents

Submit

Sign up for Article Alerts

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Abstract
    • Archaeological Evidence for Rice Domestication and Development of Rice Agriculture
    • Genetic Evidence for Rice Domestication
    • Conclusions
    • Acknowledgments
    • Footnotes
    • References
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF

You May Also be Interested in

Setting sun over a sun-baked dirt landscape
Core Concept: Popular integrated assessment climate policy models have key caveats
Better explicating the strengths and shortcomings of these models will help refine projections and improve transparency in the years ahead.
Image credit: Witsawat.S.
Model of the Amazon forest
News Feature: A sea in the Amazon
Did the Caribbean sweep into the western Amazon millions of years ago, shaping the region’s rich biodiversity?
Image credit: Tacio Cordeiro Bicudo (University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil), Victor Sacek (University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil), and Lucy Reading-Ikkanda (artist).
Syrian archaeological site
Journal Club: In Mesopotamia, early cities may have faltered before climate-driven collapse
Settlements 4,200 years ago may have suffered from overpopulation before drought and lower temperatures ultimately made them unsustainable.
Image credit: Andrea Ricci.
Steamboat Geyser eruption.
Eruption of Steamboat Geyser
Mara Reed and Michael Manga explore why Yellowstone's Steamboat Geyser resumed erupting in 2018.
Listen
Past PodcastsSubscribe
Birds nestling on tree branches
Parent–offspring conflict in songbird fledging
Some songbird parents might improve their own fitness by manipulating their offspring into leaving the nest early, at the cost of fledgling survival, a study finds.
Image credit: Gil Eckrich (photographer).

Similar Articles

Site Logo
Powered by HighWire
  • Submit Manuscript
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • RSS Feeds
  • Email Alerts

Articles

  • Current Issue
  • Special Feature Articles – Most Recent
  • List of Issues

PNAS Portals

  • Anthropology
  • Chemistry
  • Classics
  • Front Matter
  • Physics
  • Sustainability Science
  • Teaching Resources

Information

  • Authors
  • Editorial Board
  • Reviewers
  • Subscribers
  • Librarians
  • Press
  • Site Map
  • PNAS Updates
  • FAQs
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Rights & Permissions
  • About
  • Contact

Feedback    Privacy/Legal

Copyright © 2021 National Academy of Sciences. Online ISSN 1091-6490