Scientist Tracks Rice Evolution

Evolutionary biologist  and Washington University  associate professor Kenneth Olsen takes a closer look on the mutations that have emerged in rice. His latest study, which appears in the July 17, 2013 online issue of the Journal of Evolutionary Biology  particularly paid attention on the genetics of hull color.

Olsen's study found out that most of the cultivated rice worldwide have originated from the Asian rice, Oryza sativa which was bred from its wild progenitor Oryza rufipogon in southern Asia within the past 10,000 years. Meanwhile, most of the rice grown in the U.S. come from japonica rice which is genetically different from indica rice, a variety commonly grown in the tropics. In any event, there was a second unambiguous domestication event about 3,500 years ago when African cultivated rice (O. glaberrima) was bred from the African wild species O. barthii in the Niger River delta.

See Washington University in St. Louis' news release at  http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/24751.aspx.