Abstract: Domestication is the process whereby wild ancestors of animals or plants are changed at the phenotypic and genotypic level through a process of artificial selection, in order to accentuate traits that benefithuman beings. For most seed crops, this process leads to quite similar phenotypic changes, such as loss of shattering, weakened dormancy and compact plant architecture. From viewpoint of diversity, domestication is a process with genetic diversity reduced. The Oryza genus contains 22 species and distributes worldwide, which has two cultivated species, Asian rice (Oryza sativa L.) and African rice (O. glaberrima Steud.). Asian rice spreads all over the world with two major subspecies, japonica (O. sativa L. ssp. japonica) and indica (O. sativa L. ssp. indica). This feature makes rice an excellent model for elucidating cereal domestication. Ou et al (pages 1379-89) makes a comprehensive review on the progress in molecular mechanisms of rice domestication traits. Bh4 controls the husk color and has undergone selection in rice domestication. In the middle of cover image of this issue, the phylogenetic tree was constructed by using SNPs within 100Kb of the genomic region around Bh4 gene locus with 23 Asian rice and its wild relatives of AA genome. The outer part of images shows the representative changes of husk color, seed shape, and panicle type of rice under domestication process in the clockwise direction.

Key words: Rice domestication trait, shattering, dormancy, plant architecture, functional genomics