Traditional farming preserves diversity of Thai purple rice
Purple rice is a whole grain with high levels of antioxidants — and high levels of genetic diversity, thanks to traditional farming practices, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.
Rice’s origins point to China, genome researchers conclude
Rice originated in China, a team of genome researchers has concluded in a study tracing back thousands of years of evolutionary history through large-scale gene re-sequencing. Their findings, which appear in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), indicate that domesticated rice may have first appeared as far back as approximately 9,000 years ago in the Yangtze Valley of China. Previous research suggested domesticated rice may have two points of origin — India as well as China.