Wild rice species Oryza rufipogon and Oryza nivara are typically weed-like and are taller than cultivated rice Oryza sativa. While these features are helpful in the wild, since they can shade out competitors, they are unfavorable in an agricultural setting and can lead to lower yields. Through domestication and breeding, many rice varieties have been selected to be short with erect leaves that have steep angles, which allows better light distribution through the canopy. Despite these improvements, the distribution is uneven and is affected by changes in wind and cloud cover.

“Previously, researchers primarily focused on photosynthesis in constant high light. When you’re in a field, however, plants are always in dynamic conditions and leaves are rarely in constant light due to clouds, overlying leaves moving in the wind, and intermittent shading caused by the movement of the sun,” said Liana Acevedo-Siaca, first author of this paper, who was a graduate student in the Long Lab when this work was conducted. “Additionally, other researchers have only looked at domesticated rice in the context of photosynthetic induction. We wanted to compare them to their progenitors to see what has changed over time.”