Study shows genetic rice breeding goes back 10,000 years
Tuesday, June 7, 2011 - 09:30
in Biology & Nature
(PhysOrg.com) -- In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Masanori Yamasaki and colleagues from Kobe University in Japan, describe how they analyzed the genomes of several types of rice and discovered that the lengths of the stems on the plants grew shorter over time as rice was first being domesticated, resulting in sturdier plants and increased grain output. They conclude that due to the type of mutant genes seen in the early plants that caused the shorter stems, intentional breeding of rice must have occurred as far back as 10,000 years ago.