Background
Plant domestication/adaptation is a good model for evo-devo studies. Mutations that caused morphological and physiological change, followed by human selection, finally led to improvement of phenotypes suitable for different kinds of environments. Originating from the Yangtze Valley, rice is a facultative short-day plant. Rice spread southward thousands of years ago, but one of the new traits beneficial to crop yield would be loss of sensitivity to photoperiod. That is, if rice could be cultivated 2 or 3 seasons each year, the production would at least double.
Results
We used the sequence information for Heading date 1 (Hd1) gene to reveal the relationship of sequence changes and flowering phenotypes of rice in different regions. Seven loss-of-function hd1 haplotypes were reported previously. By data mining the genome sequencing information in the public domain, we discovered another 3 types. Allele haplotypes are present in sub-tropical and tropical regions, which indicates human selection. Two of these alleles, types 7 and 13, must have occurred early in southern Asia and then were introgressed in many local landraces. According to the rice 3K database, more than one-third of the world’s rice accessions contain these 2 loss-of-function haplotypes. We also demonstrate that these haplotypes are present in weedy rice populations, again indicating that these alleles were present in rice cultivation for long time. In comparing the wild rice sequence information, these loss-of-function haplotypes occurred in agro but were not from wild rice.
Conclusion
In the current study, we analyzed how sequence changes in a rice flowering-control gene occurred, were selected and were retained during rice cultivation. Many loss-of-function hd1 alleles have existed in sub-tropical and tropical Asia rice-growing areas for a long time. Some of these haplotypes were present locally, but 2, types 7 and 13, were spread in many regions and are now included in most of the modern varieties in southern Asia.