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 genome6 and 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.

El origen africano del cultivo de arroz en las Américas / The african origins of rice cultivation in the Americas

El arroz no empezó a ser cultivado en las Américas sino hasta el periodo del comercio transatlántico de esclavos. Para el siglo XVIII este cultivo ya se había establecido extensamente en plantaciones desde Carolina del Sur hasta Brasil. Cultivado por esclavos así como cimarrones, tanto para la subsistencia como para la exportación, el comienzo de la cultivación de arroz en las Américas invariablemente se ha atribuido a los dueños de plantaciones europeos. Este artículo presenta evidencia del importante papel que desempeñaron los africanos en establecer la cultura del arroz en el Nuevo Mundo. Este trabajo se enfoca sobre el arroz africano (Oryza glaberrima), personas esclavizadas de África occidental para quienes este cultivo era un alimento básico, y un sistema de conocimiento indígena sobre el arroz con características idénticas entre el Atlántico africano y americano. Un estudio comparativo de usos del suelo, métodos de cultivo, procesos de molienda y tradiciones culinarias ilumina el tema de la difusión de la cultura africana de arroz a las Américas, así como la labor que desempeñaron los esclavos de África occidental en liderar el cultivo de arroz para eventualmente convertirlo en un alimento básico de subsistencia en el Nuevo Mundo (AU)

Until the period of the transatlantic slave trade, rice was not cultivated in the Americas. By the eighteenth century the crop was widely established across plantation societies from South Carolina to Brazil. Grown by slaves as well as maroons, for subsistence and also for export, the onset of rice cultivation in the Americas has long been attributed to European planters. This article presents evidence that supports African agency in establishing rice culture in the New World. Emphasis is on African rice (Oryza glaberrima), enslaved West Africans for whom the crop was a dietary staple, and an indigenous rice knowledge system with identical features across the African and American Atlantic. A comparative analysis of land use, methods of cultivation, milling and cooking traditions illuminates the diffusion of African rice culture to the Americas and the role of West African slaves in pioneering rice as a New World subsistence staple (AU)