Studies on Ancient Rice—Where Botanists, Agronomists, Archeologists, Linguists, and Ethnologists Meet

Abstract

Taiwan's aboriginal peoples are thought to be related to ancestral Austronesian-speaking peoples. Currently, Taiwan has 14 officially acknowledged aboriginal tribes. The major crops currently farmed in aboriginal areas are rice (Oryza sativa) and foxtail millet (Setaria italica). Archeologists recently excavated the remains of several early cultures in Taiwan. The most plentiful plant remains were carbonated rice and foxtail millet grains. The earliest 14 C date of these excavation sites is ∼5,000 BP . These settlements may be those of the earliest ancestral Austronesian speakers in Taiwan. Rice domestication is a complex story. In this study, we identified the functional nucleotide polymorphisms of 16 domesticationrelated genes using 60 landraces collected from aboriginal Taiwanese villages about 100 years ago. We also screened the phenotypes of these landraces. By integrating phenoand genotypic data, together with data from archeologists and linguists, we may be able to better understand the history of rice cultivation in Taiwan and nearby areas.

Genetic Diversity of Landraces and Improved Varieties of Rice (Oryza sativa L.) in Taiwan

“…The tropical japonica landraces preserved by indigenous people experiencing human-mediated movement from Southeast Asia thousands of years ago had been selected for various preferences and for adaptation to hot and humid environments in tropical and subtropical regions. The landraces collected from indigenous Taiwanese tribes about a century ago exhibited much variation in plant architecture, seeds and allele richness of genes conferring domesticated syndrome traits (Hsieh et al 2011).…”

“…The allele richness of landraces was, in general, about 30% higher than that of cultivars (Kovach and McCouch 2008;Zhang et al 2009) In Taiwan, archaeological evidence shows that rice has been cultivated by indigenous people for more than 5,000 years (Hu 1993). Excavated grains exhibit various sizes and shapes and resemble tropical japonica and indica rice (Hsieh et al 2011). In the early 17th century, immigrants from two provinces of southeast China, Fujian and Guangdong, brought indica landraces to Taiwan.…”

“…In the late 19th century, approximately 1,197 collections of temperate japonica rice were introduced from Japan (Iso 1964). Sixty Taiwanese landraces have been widely used in rice research and breeding, revealed by 16 domesticationsyndrome genes (Hsieh et al 2011). Taiwanese landraces have contributed signi cantly to modern indica and temperate japonica rice breeding in Asian countries.…”

“…Indeed, the DGWG allele has been extensively applied to improve grain yield of both indica and japonica varieties in the past 50 years (Sasaki et al 2002; Asano et al 2011; Zhao et al 2010). Taichung 65 (TC65), an old japonica cultivar, inherited null alleles of two photoperiodic genes, Ehd1 and Hd1, from landraces and has been extensively applied in modern rice breeding and in studying owering in response to day length (Doi et al 2004;Hsieh et al 2011;Lin 1991;Wei et al 2016;Yano et al 2000).…”

The Austronesian Diaspora: A Synthetic Total Evidence Model

“…The fourteen recognised indigenous tribes who inhabit Taiwan today do not represent the totality of Austronesian people who have ever lived there. At least eight major tribal groups vanished from the western plains region in the fairly recent past as they were absorbed into the majority Han culture around 300 ybp [47]. So, it is possible that one or more of them spoke an Austronesian language from the tenth group and were the ancestral population(s) for all contemporary descendent branches.…”