Current opinion now suggests that the first domestications of rice occured at more than one place in Asia. Asian rice was first domesticated on flood-plains as a shallow or deep water crop, with cultivation later extended to the rain-fed uplands.
Augustin Pyrame de Candolle in 1882 postulated in his book that rice culture first occurred in China where historical records were the earliest.
Rice cultivation is thought to have started in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and then spread gradually both northwards and southwards.
Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov in 1951 considered that rice domestication occurred in India. The references to rice appear in ancient Hindu script (estimated to be 1500 to 1000 BC. Up- to the 1950s, the oldest excavation of rice grains was found at Hasthinapur at between 1000 an 750 BC.
History
and origin of rice cultivation
