A Journey to the West: The Ancient Dispersal of Rice Out of East Asia.

Funder: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human HistoryRice is one of the most culturally valued and widely grown crops in the world today, and extensive research over the past decade has clarified much of the narrative of its domestication and early spread across East and South Asia. However, the timing and routes of its dispersal into West Asia and Europe, through which rice eventually became an important ingredient in global cuisines, has remained less clear. In this article, we discuss the piecemeal, but growing, archaeobotanical data for rice in West Asia. We also integrate written sources, linguistic data, and ethnohistoric analogies, in order to better understand the adoption of rice outside its regions of origin. The human-mediated westward spread of rice proceeded gradually, while its social standing and culinary uses repeatedly changing over time and place. Rice was present in West Asia and Europe by the tail end of the first millennium BC, but did not become a significant crop in West Asia until the past few centuries. Complementary historical, linguistic, and archaeobotanical data illustrate two separate and roughly contemporaneous routes of westward dispersal, one along the South Asian coast and the other through Silk Road trade. By better understanding the adoption of this water-demanding crop in the arid regions of West Asia, we explore an important chapter in human adaptation and agricultural decision making

Genetic evidence for a western Chinese origin of broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum).

Broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) is a key domesticated cereal that has been associated with the north China centre of agricultural origins. Early archaeobotanical evidence for this crop has generated two major debates. First, its contested presence in pre-7000 cal. BP sites in eastern Europe has admitted the possibility of a western origin. Second, its occurrence in the 7th and 8th millennia cal. BP in diverse regions of northern China is consistent with several possible origin foci, associated with different Neolithic cultures. We used microsatellite and granule-bound starch synthase I (GBSSI) genotype data from 341 landrace samples across Eurasia, including 195 newly genotyped samples from China, to address these questions. A spatially explicit discriminative modelling approach favours an eastern Eurasian origin for the expansion of broomcorn millet. This is consistent with recent archaeobotanical and chronological re-evaluations, and stable isotopic data. The same approach, together with the distribution of GBSSI alleles, is also suggestive that the origin of broomcorn millet expansion was in western China. This second unexpected finding stimulates new questions regarding the ecology of wild millet and vegetation dynamics in China prior to the mid-Holocene domestication of millet. The chronological relationship between population expansion and domestication is unclear, but our analyses are consistent with the western Loess Plateau being at least one region of primary domestication of broomcorn millet. Patterns of genetic variation indicate that this region was the source of populations to the west in Eurasia, which broomcorn probably reached via the Inner Asia Mountain Corridor from the 3rd millennium BC. A secondary westward expansion along the steppe may have taken place from the 2nd millennium BC.European Research Council Advanced Investigator award (GA249642, ‘Food Globalization in Prehistory) Marie Curie Initial Training Network (BEAN—Bridging the European and Anatolian Neolithic, GA no. 289966) Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship (Grant: 100719/Z/12/Z). Gerka-Henkel Stiftung (AZ 05/ZA/12), and NSFC (41672171) National Natural Science Foundation of China (31271791) Shanxi Scholarship Council of China (2016-066) China Agriculture Research System (CARS-06-13.5-A16

Journey to the east: Diverse routes and variable flowering times for wheat and barley en route to prehistoric China.

Today, farmers in many regions of eastern Asia sow their barley grains in the spring and harvest them in the autumn of the same year (spring barley). However, when it was first domesticated in southwest Asia, barley was grown between the autumn and subsequent spring (winter barley), to complete their life cycles before the summer drought. The question of when the eastern barley shifted from the original winter habit to flexible growing schedules is of significance in terms of understanding its spread. This article investigates when barley cultivation dispersed from southwest Asia to regions of eastern Asia and how the eastern spring barley evolved in this context. We report 70 new radiocarbon measurements obtained directly from barley grains recovered from archaeological sites in eastern Eurasia. Our results indicate that the eastern dispersals of wheat and barley were distinct in both space and time. We infer that barley had been cultivated in a range of markedly contrasting environments by the second millennium BC. In this context, we consider the distribution of known haplotypes of a flowering-time gene in barley, Ppd-H1, and infer that the distributions of those haplotypes may reflect the early dispersal of barley. These patterns of dispersal resonate with the second and first millennia BC textual records documenting sowing and harvesting times for barley in central/eastern China

Identification of Milk Component in Ancient Food Residue by Proteomics

Proteomic approaches based on mass spectrometry have been recently used in archaeological and art researches, generating promising results for protein identification. Little information is known about eastward spread and eastern limits of prehistoric milking in eastern Eurasia.In this paper, an ancient visible food remain from Subeixi Cemeteries (cal. 500 to 300 years BC) of the Turpan Basin in Xinjiang, China, preliminarily determined containing 0.432 mg/kg cattle casein with ELISA, was analyzed by using an improved method based on liquid chromatography (LC) coupled with MALDI-TOF/TOF-MS to further identify protein origin. The specific sequence of bovine casein and the homology sequence of goat/sheep casein were identified.The existence of milk component in ancient food implies goat/sheep and cattle milking in ancient Subeixi region, the furthest eastern location of prehistoric milking in the Old World up to date. It is envisioned that this work provides a new approach for ancient residue analysis and other archaeometry field

Meeting the cultural and service needs of Arabic international students by using QFD

Quality has become an important factor in global competition for many reasons. Intensive global competition and the demand for better quality by customers has led organizations to realize the benefits of providing quality products and services in order to successfully compete and survive. Higher education institutions are one example of these organisations. Higher education institutions work in an intensive competitive environment worldwide driven by increasing demands for learning by local and international students. As a result, the managers of these sectors have realized that improving the quality of services is important for achieving customer satisfaction which can help survival in an internationally competitive market. To do this, it is necessary for organizations to know their customers and identify their requirements. To this end, many higher education institutions have adopted principles of total quality management (TQM) to improve their education quality which leads to better performance through involvement of every department to achieve excellence in business. This chapter considers the importance of measuring quality in order to assist universities to proactively manage the design and improvement of the social and academic experiences of postgraduate international students, and plan management decision-making processes to deliver high-quality services in a globalized business of provision of higher education. Higher education institutions must operate effectively and efficiently and be able to deliver quality programs, by seeking to better understand the needs of their customers to be competitive in this market space

Correction: Journey to the east: Diverse routes and variable flowering times for wheat and barley en route to prehistoric China.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187405.]

Pollen and phytolith evidence for rice cultivation and vegetation change during the mid-late holocene at the Jiangli site, Suzhou, East China.

Pollen and phytolith analyses were undertaken at the Jiangli site in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, combined with studies on macrofossils by flotation. The concentration of pollen decreased while the percentage of Poaceae pollen in the profile increased from the late phase of the Majiabang Culture to the Songze Culture suggesting that human impact on the local environment intensified gradually. The discovery of rice paddy implies a relatively advanced rice cultivation in this area during the middle-late Holocene. Other than phytoliths, the high percentage of Oryza-type Poaceae pollen (larger than 40 µm) supplied robust evidence for the existence of rice paddy. Moreover, the fact that the farther from the rice paddy, the lower the concentration and percentage of Poaceae pollen also proves that the dispersal and deposition of pollen is inversely proportional to the distance

Ancient plant use at the site of Yuergou, Xinjiang, China: implications from desiccated and charred plant remains

Archaeobotanical studies were undertaken at the Yuergou site, which is located in the Turpan basin in Xinjiang, China, and which has been dated to around 2300-2400 years b.p. Altogether 21 taxa were identified. Four cereal remains were identified, Triticum aestivum, Hordeum vulgare var. coeleste, Panicum miliaceum and Setaria italica. The first three were probably cultivated while the last one may not have been grown deliberately, but probably grew together with plants of P. miliaceum. A fruit stone of Ziziphus jujuba (Chinese date) was discovered, which showed that this may have been cultivated around the site during that time. Charcoal of Picea sp. was found, from wood which must have been used as fuel by the indigenous people. Fifteen taxa of wild plants were also identified, most of which can be considered as weeds, and which grew near the site. Burs of Xanthium strumarium were discovered. As nearly all of them were broken, the seeds may have been used by the ancient inhabitants. Since most of the cereal remains consisted of chaff, they must represent by-products. Furthermore, grains of Echinochloa crus-galli may also have been exploited as complementary food resources. All the above indicate that both cultivated and wild plants were used for cereals, fuel, or other purposes, and plant resources played important roles in the daily life of the ancient inhabitants of the Yuergou site