Asian Rice

Oryza sativa

Jasmine Molina

Grabber

Did you know that the rice feeding more than half of the world's population today evolved from a wild grass growing in Asian wetlands for more than 9,000 years ago?

Through domestication and natural selection, Oryza sativa transformed from a simple wild plant into one of humanity's most important food sources today.

Geological Time Scale

Species Age

Approximate age: 8,000–9,000 years before present (about 7000–6000 BCE)

Deep Time History

While domesticated rice is only thousands of years old, its lineage is much older:

Origin of flowering plants (angiosperms): ~140 million yrs ago
Origin of grasses (Poaceae): ~70–100 million yrs ago
Ancient grass genome duplication: ~50–70 million yrs ago
Diversification of the genus Oryza: ~9 million yrs ago
Earliest divergence among AA-genome rice species: ~3 million yrs ago
Domestication of Oryza sativa: ~9,000 yrs ago

Evolutionary Origin

Asian rice evolved from wild populations of Oryza rufipogon. During domestication, humans selected plants with:

Larger grains
Higher yield
Non-shattering seeds (grains remain attached for harvest)
More uniform maturation

Over thousands of years these traits accumulated, producing modern cultivated rice

Sub-Members of Asian Rice

Japonica rice

Characteristics:

Short-round grains and sticky

Example:

Sushi rice

Indica rice

Characteristics:

Long grains, fluffly, non-sticky

Example:

Jasmine rice

Aus rice

Characteristics:

Mature early, adapt to drought

Example:

Dular rice

Aromatic rice

Characteristics:

Fragrant grains, medium-long

Example:

Basmati-type

Glutinous rice

Characteristics:

Very sticky and chewy

Example:

Black sweet rice

References

Choi, J. Y., Platts, A. E., Fuller, D. Q., Hsing, Y. I., Wing, R. A., & Purugganan, M. D. (2017). The Rice Paradox: Multiple Origins but Single Domestication in Asian Rice. Molecular biology and evolution, 34(4), 969–979. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msx049

Huang, C., Chen, Z., & Liang, C. (2021). Oryza pan-genomics: A new foundation for future rice research and improvement. The Crop Journal. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cj.2021.04.003

Jacquemin, J., Laudié, M., & Cooke, R. (2009). A recent duplication revisited: phylogenetic analysis reveals an ancestral duplication highly-conserved throughout the Oryza genus and beyond. BMC Plant Biology, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2229-9-146

‌Molina, J., Sikora, M., Garud, N., Flowers, J. M., Rubinstein, S., Reynolds, A., Huang, P., Jackson, S., Schaal, B. A., Bustamante, C. D., Boyko, A. R., & Purugganan, M. D. (2011). Molecular evidence for a single evolutionary origin of domesticated rice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108(20), 8351–8356. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1104686108

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