Domestication and geographic origin of Oryza sativa in China: insights from multilocus analysis of nucleotide variation of O. sativa and O. rufipogon

Abstract Previous studies have indicated that C hina is one of the domestication centres of A sian cultivated rice ( O ryza sativa ), and common wild rice ( O . rufipogon ) is the progenitor of O . sativa . However, the number of domestication times and the geographic origin of A sian cultivated rice in C hina are still under debate. In this study, 100 accessions of A sian cultivated rice and 111 accessions of common wild rice in C hina were selected to examine the relationship between O . sativa and O . rufipogon and thereby infer the domestication and evolution of O . sativa in C hina through sequence analyses of six gene regions, trn C ‐ycf6 in chloroplast genomes, cox3 in mitochondrial genomes and ITS , E hd1 , W axy , H d1 in nuclear genomes. The results indicated that the two subspecies of O . sativa (indica and japonica) were domesticated independently from different populations of O . rufipogon with gene flow occurring later from japonica to indica; S outhern C hina was the genetic diversity centre of O . rufipogon , and the P earl R iver basin near the T ropic of C ancer was the domestication centre of O . sativa in C hina.