[Assam] It is PragJyotishpur/Kamrup where rice was first supposed to have had been domesticated to be exact. Scientists need to home in with their expertise to establish this in the Word Scientific Community as a proven fact.

[Bartta Bistar]

*Rice roots lie in east India*

*
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060608/asp/nation/story_6324661.asp?headline=Rice~roots~lie~in~east~India
*

G.S. MUDUR

*New Delhi, June 7: *Eastern India is part of a swath of territory south of
the Himalayas where prehistoric people first cultivated rice, scientists
reported on Monday.

Their findings, published in the US journal *Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences*, contradict the widely held view that the rice
varieties cultivated today originated from wild rice first domesticated in
southern China.

The two major rice varieties grown worldwide today — *Oryza sativa indica *and
*Oryza sativa japonica *— owe their origins to two independent events of
domestication thousands of years ago, American and Taiwanese researchers
said.

In a bid to trace the ancestral roots of rice — a cereal eaten by more than
half of the world's population — plant geneticist Barbara Schaal at
Washington University and her colleagues analysed the genetic make-up of
wild and cultivated rice varieties.

Their studies show that the indica variety was domesticated south of the
Himalayas within a region spanning eastern India, Myanmar and Thailand,
while the japonica variety was domesticated from wild rice in southern
China.

"We now have strong evidence for multiple sites of domestication of rice,"
Schaal told *The Telegraph *over the telephone.

The new studies also suggest that an additional — third — domestication
event might have occurred in India, giving rise to a minor variety of rice
called "aus" — a drought-tolerant strain cultivated in India and Bangladesh.

As ancient people moved across the continents, they carried rice with them.
Rice is now cultivated in every continent except Antarctica.

While there is consensus that rice had its roots in Asia, whether it was
domesticated in southern China alone or at multiple locations has been under
debate.

The Washington University team is planning studies aimed at narrowing the
site of rice domestication within the two broad geographical regions they
have identified.

"But it's unlikely that we'll be able to pinpoint the site for the first
domestication. Humans have been moving rice around throughout history. This
shuffling by humans obscures the geographical signals," Schaal said
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.assamnet.org/pipermail/assam-assamnet.org/attachments/20060608/00b1b3b9/attachment.htm>