Tracing ancestor rice of Suriname Maroons back to its African origin.
African rice (Oryza glaberrima) and African cultivation practices are said to have influenced emerging colonial plantation economies in the Americas1,2. However, the level of impact of African rice practices is difficult to establish because of limited written or botanical records2,3. Recent findings of O. glaberrima in rice fields of Suriname Maroons bear evidence of the high level of knowledge about rice among African slaves and their descendants, who consecrate it in ancestor rituals4,5. Here we establish the strong similarity, and hence likely origin, of the first extant New World landrace of O. glaberrima to landraces from the Upper Guinean forests in West Africa. We collected African rice from a Maroon market in Paramaribo, Suriname, propagated it, sequenced its genome6and compared it with genomes of 109 accessions representing O. glaberrima diversity across West Africa. By analysing 1,649,769 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in clustering analyses, the Suriname sample appears sister to an Ivory Coast landrace, and shows no evidence of introgression from Asian rice. Whereas the Dutch took most slaves from Ghana, Benin and Central Africa7, the diaries of slave ship captains record the purchase of food for provisions when sailing along the West African Coast8, offering one possible explanation for the patterns of genetic similarity. This study demonstrates the utility of genomics in understanding the largely unwritten histories of crop cultures of diaspora communities.
Biosystematics group, Wageningen University, PO Box 16, 6700 AP, Wageningen, The Netherlands.|Naturalis Biodiversity Center, PO Box 9517, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Tinde R
0000-0002-4951-1894
TR
van Andel
Department of Biology, Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, New York University, 12 Waverly Place, New York, New York 10003, USA.
Rachel S
RS
Meyer
Biosystematics group, Wageningen University, PO Box 16, 6700 AP, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
Saulo A
SA
Aflitos
Departmemt of Geography, University of California, Box 951524, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
Judith A
JA
Carney
Biosystematics group, Wageningen University, PO Box 16, 6700 AP, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
Margaretha A
MA
Veltman
Arizona Genomics Institute, School of Plant Sciences, University of Arizona, 1657 E. Helen Street, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA.
Dario
D
Copetti
Department of Biology, Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, New York University, 12 Waverly Place, New York, New York 10003, USA.|Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, New York University Abu Dhabi, Saadiyat Island, PO Box 129188, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Jonathan M
JM
Flowers
Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam, Plantage Middenlaan 2, 1018 DD, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Reinout M
0000-0002-7915-9959
RM
Havinga
Knowledge Technology and Innovation group, Social Sciences Department, Wageningen University, PO Box 8130, 6700 EW, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
Harro
0000-0001-7338-7910
H
Maat
Department of Biology, Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, New York University, 12 Waverly Place, New York, New York 10003, USA.|Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, New York University Abu Dhabi, Saadiyat Island, PO Box 129188, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Michael D
MD
Purugganan
Arizona Genomics Institute, School of Plant Sciences, University of Arizona, 1657 E. Helen Street, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA.|International Rice Research Institute, Genetic Resource Center, Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines.
Rod A
RA
Wing
Biosystematics group, Wageningen University, PO Box 16, 6700 AP, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
M Eric
0000-0001-6777-6565
ME
Schranz
D000354:Africa, Western; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000235:genetics*; D005006:Ethnicity; D018745:Genome, Plant; D063426:Human Migration; D006801:Humans; D012275:Oryza / Q000235:genetics*; D010802:Phylogeny; D063148:Plant Dispersal; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D013532:Suriname