Rice types in Europe

In relation to the last posting, I'm still doing research on this topic but would like to introduce it at this time.

The type of rice grown in Europe since medieval times -- like the paella of Valencia and the arborio of the Po Valley in Italy -- are of the Japonica variety. Rice agriculture in Spain as previously mentioned began possibly as early as the 8th century and definitely existed already by the 10th century. Rice was introduced into Italy probably in the 15th century or earlier, possibly from Spain.

Although I know of no studies yet that have investigated the types of rice used in medieval Europe, the general type can be ascertained by rice dishes traditional in the areas involved. Paella, which comes from the Moorish word for "leftover" was a dish made by mixing rice with other leftover foods, and thus dates from Muslim times. It always involved sticky, short to medium grain rice i.e., Japonica types. In the same sense, risotto also involves a short to medium grain sticky rice that has the ability to absorb liquid and release starch into the dish, a quality not found with long grain varieties.


Risotto (via Wikipedia)

In Egypt, while both Indica and Japonica varieties are now raised, the evidence points to Japonica as the older type.

Also, we can surmise by the practices used from the Shatt al-Arab to Valencia since medieval times that the rice varieties had to be planted entirely in wet fields -- something that is a requirement for Japonica but not Indica.

Regards.
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

Introduction of rice and tropical crops into Moorish Spain

Rice may have been introduced into Moorish Spain as early as the late 8th century. By the time of Hakam II in the mid-10th century, we learn from his secretary Arib bin Sa'id that tropical crops like rice (Ar. al-ruz, Sp. arroz), sugar cane (Ar. al-sukkar, Sp. azucar), ginger, banana, watermelon, oranges (Ar., Sp. naranja), lemon (Ar. laimun, Sp. limon) and other citrus were grown in Spain. This general type of agriculture involving these crops was known as filaha hindiyya or "Indian agriculture."

While I'm not aware of any detailed exposition of the transfer of rice agriculture across North Africa to Spain, the general spread of rice in the western Muslim regions during this period is linked with the Zutt and Sayabiga as discussed before. In the early 8th century, these groups were relocated from Mesopotamia to Antioch in Syria where up to 8,000 water buffalo were transported. As mentioned in the previous blog, at the ascension of Hakam II, there is some evidence of domestic water buffalo in Muslim Spain. The 9th century ruler of Egypt and Syria, Tulun, was said to have died from dysentery after drinking too much buffalo milk while in Antioch, so at least by this time we could expect the buffalo to have reached North Africa.

The rice agriculture of Spain like that of the Shatt al-Arab was of the wet paddy type in which the plant was raised entirely in submerged fields. These fields were built in areas that normally flooded, like the Albufera lake region in Valencia, using dikes, canals and in some cases terraces. Most of the rice and sugar cane fields were located on the eastern coast in areas like Valencia, Murcia and Andalusia. Also interesting is the apparent introduction of the use of verbascum as a fish poison during the Moorish periods. The use of verbascum fish poison appears in Arab literature in the medieval period known by the name mahi zahraj or mahi zahre.



Irrigated fields in the Albufera region, Valencia, Spain. Abundant rice and sugar cane fields can still be seen in some areas of Valencia and Murcia. Click image for full view.


Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Dymock, William, Charles James Hislop Warden, and David Hooper. Pharmacographia Indica. A History of the Principal Drugs of Vegetable Origin, Met with in British India. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., ld; [etc.], 1890.

Imamuddin, S. M. Some Aspects of the Socio-Economic and Cultural History of Muslim Spain, 711-1492 A.D. Medieval Iberian Peninsula. Texts and studies, v. 2. Leiden: Brill, 1965.

Mez, Adam, S. Khuda Bukhsh, and D. S. Margoliouth. The Renaissance of Islam. 1973.

O'Callaghan, Joseph F. A History of Medieval Spain. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

White rice spread through single japonica gene

A new study strongly suggests that about98 percent of today's white rice evolved from red rice through natural selection and was spread through a gene that originated in the japonica variety.

The results are surprising as the two major types of rice, indica and japonica are infertile toward each other, while the study suggests that japonica must have crossed (introgressed) with indica t an early period.

Early studies have shown that the gene for non-shattering in rice also originated in japonica.

Apparently farmers selected the RC gene that gives the white pericarp because, among other things, the hull was easier to remove and it required less cooking time than red rice.

Since rice pollen rarely travels more than 10 meters, and the RC gene was able to transverse barriers like the Himalayas, added with the fact that there is obvious evidence of human selection, the researchers concluded the gene must have spread through human transport and migration.

Some time before the infertility barrier between japonica and indica arose, this gene along with sh4 non-shattering allele, both of which are believed to have a single origin, spread through almost all varieties of both japonica and indica.

While the authors don't speculate as to the time and which people would have spread these genes, I think one obvious candidate would be either early Austric or Austro-Asiatic speakers who migrated across broad areas on both sides of the Himalayas at a very early period.

The full article is available free at:

http://genetics.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pgen.0030133

Abstract:

Global Dissemination of a Single Mutation Conferring White Pericarp in Rice

Megan T. Sweeney¹, Michael J. Thomson^2,3, Yong Gu Cho⁴, Yong Jin Park⁵, Scott H. Williamson⁶, Carlos D. Bustamante⁶, Susan R. McCouch^1*

1 Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America, 2 International Rice Research Institute, Los Baños, Philippines, 3 Indonesian Center for Agricultural Biotechnology and Genetic Resources Research and Development, Bogor, Indonesia, 4 Department of Agronomy, Chungbuk National University, Chongju, Republic of Korea, 5 National Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology, Suwon, Republic of Korea, 6 Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America

Here we report that the change from the red seeds of wild rice to the white seeds of cultivated rice (Oryza sativa) resulted from the strong selective sweep of a single mutation, a frame-shift deletion within the Rc gene that is found in 97.9% of white rice varieties today. A second mutation, also within Rc, is present in less than 3% of white accessions surveyed. Haplotype analysis revealed that the predominant mutation originated in the japonica subspecies and crossed both geographic and sterility barriers to move into the indica subspecies. A little less than one Mb of japonica DNA hitchhiked with the rc allele into most indica varieties, suggesting that other linked domestication alleles may have been transferred from japonica to indica along with white pericarp color. Our finding provides evidence of active cultural exchange among ancient farmers over the course of rice domestication coupled with very strong, positive selection for a single white allele in both subspecies of O. sativa.

News: Seed shattering selection in rice domestication

Haven't read the article yet, but the abstract below makes some
interestng claims.

If I read it right, it suggests that artificial selection for rice
plants that do not shatter seeds, began before the differentiation of
indica and japonica.

This suggests rather strongly, since the specific single mutation is
identified, and contrary to some other recent studies, that both
indica and japonica descend from a single *domesticated* ancestor.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
---

Planta. 2007 Jan 10;
Origin of seed shattering in rice (Oryza sativa L.).

* Lin Z,
* Griffith ME,
* Li X,
* Zhu Z,
* Tan L,
* Fu Y,
* Zhang W,
* Wang X,
* Xie D,
* Sun C.

Department of Plant Genetics and Breeding and State Key Laboratory
of Agrobiotechnology, China Agricultural University, Key Laboratory of
Crop Heterosis and Utilization of Ministry of Education, Beijing Key
Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic
Improvement and Genome of Ministry of Agriculture, Beijing, 100094,
China, suncq@....

A critical evolutionary step during rice domestication was the
elimination of seed shattering. Wild rice disperses seeds freely at
maturity to guarantee the propagation, while cultivated rice retains
seeds on the straws to make easy harvest and decrease the loss of
production. The molecular basis for this key event during rice
domestication remains to be elucidated. Here we show that the seed
shattering is controlled by a single dominant gene, Shattering1
(SHA1), encoding a member of the trihelix family of plant-specific
transcription factors. SHA1 was mapped to a 5.5 kb genomic fragment,
which contains a single open reading frame, using a backcrossed
population between cultivated rice Teqing and an introgression line
IL105 with the seed shattering habit derived from perennial common
wild rice, YJCWR. The predicted amino acid sequence of SHA1 in YJCWR
and IL105 is distinguished from that in eight domesticated rice
cultivars, including Teqing, by only a single amino acid substitution
(K79N) caused by a single nucleotide change (g237t). Further sequence
verification on the g237t mutation site revealed that the g237t
mutation is present in all the domesticated rice cultivars, including
92 indica and 108 japonica cultivars, but not in any of the 24 wild
rice accessions examined. Our results demonstrate that the g237t
mutation in SHA1 accounts for the elimination of seed shattering, and
that all the domesticated rice cultivars harbor the mutant sha1 gene
and therefore have lost the ability to shed their seeds at maturity.
In addition, our data support the theory that the non-shattering trait
selection during rice domestication occurred prior to the
indica-japonica differentiation in rice evolutionary history.