Rice (Oryza sativa L.) was domesticated about 10000 years ago and has been one of the most important food crops in the world. Owing to the genetic differentiations within and between rice and its wild ancestral species, the origin and domestication of rice have been controversial for a long time. Many previous investigations, especially recent genomic evidence suggested that two subspecies of rice originated independently from early differentiation populations of the wild ancestral species while quite a few domesticated genes associated with important agricultural traits might occur only in one subspecies at first and spread into the other one by introgression. Therefore, the origin and spreading mode of domesticated genes is crucial to understanding of the domestication of rice. Fortunately, the recent development of high-throughput genomic sequencing technologies and related approaches of population genomics offer us an opportunity to research population genetic differentiations within and between rice and its wild ancestral species at the genome scale, which has been the key to reveal the mystery of rice origin and domestication.

the origin of rice  /  plant domestication  /  genome