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

Abstract

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 domestication-related genes using 60 landraces collected from aboriginal Taiwanese villages about 100 years ago. We also screened the phenotypes of these landraces. By integrating pheno- and 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.