The adoption of rice farming during the first millennium BC was a turning point in Japanese prehistory, defining the subsequent cultural, linguistic, and genetic variation in the archipelago. Here, we use a suite of novel Bayesian techniques to estimate the regional rates of dispersal and arrival time of rice farming using radiocarbon dates on charred rice remains. Our results indicate substantial variations in the rate of dispersal of rice within the Japanese islands, hinting at the presence of a mixture of demic and cultural diffusion, geographic variations in the suitability of its cultivation, and the possible role of existing social networks in facilitating or hindering the adoption of the new subsistence economy.
NAC [NO APICAL MERISTEM (NAM), ARABIDOPSIS TRANSCRIPTION ACTIVATOR FACTOR 1/2 (ATAF1/2), and CUP-SHAPED COTYLEDON (CUC2)] transcription factors are key regulators of plant growth, development, and stress responses but were also crucial players during land plant adaptation and crop domestication. Using representative members of green algae, bryophytes, lycophytes, gymnosperms, and angiosperms, we expanded the evolutionary history of NAC transcription factors to unveil the relationships among members of this gene family. We found a massive increase in the number of NAC transcription factors from green algae to lycophytes and an even larger increase in flowering plants.
Henan Key Laboratory of Rice Molecular Breeding and High Efficiency Production, College of Agronomy, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou 450046, China.
Clonal reproduction through seeds, also termed apomixis, has the potential to revolutionize agriculture by allowing hybrid crops to be clonally propagated. Although apomixis has been introduced into rice through engineering in recent years, the poor fertility and low-frequency clonal reproduction of synthetic apomicts hinder the application of apomixis in crop breeding. Here, in elite hybrid rice, we generated many apomicts, which produced clonal progeny with frequencies of > 95.
The Key Laboratory of Agro-Environment in Midstream of Yangtze Plain, Ministry of Agriculture, The Key Laboratory of Prevention, Control and Remediation of Soil Heavy Metal Pollution in Hunan Province, Institute of Agro-Environment and Ecology, Hunan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Changsha, 410125, PR China.
Cadmium (Cd) and arsenic (As) contamination risk in paddy soils has raised global concern. In order to scientifically and objectively evaluate the bioavailability of soil Cd, As and the risk of Cd or As threshold in contaminated farmland, this study was conducted to investigate different types of extractants for their potential extraction efficiency of Cd and As. Soils from two different parent materials in Hunan, Yueyang and Yiyang, typical double-cropping rice production areas in the south of China, were used as test soils.
State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Changshu National Agro-Ecosystem Observation and Research Station, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China.
Accurate nitrogen diagnosis is essential for optimizing rice yield and sustainability. This study investigates the potential of using multi-leaf SPAD measurements combined with machine learning models to improve nitrogen nutrition diagnostics in rice. Conducted across five locations with 15 rice cultivars, SPAD values from the first to fifth fully expanded leaves were collected at key growth stages.
Strigolactones (SLs) are apocarotenoid plant hormones that regulate shoot branching. The natural SLs can be divided into two groups, canonical and non-canonical SLs according to those chemical structures. In a model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, it has been thought to produce only non-canonical SLs.
