Crop domestication has fundamentally altered the course of human history, causing a shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies and stimulating the rise of modern civilization. A greater understanding of crop domestication would provide a theoretical basis for how we could improve current crops and develop new crops to deal with environmental challenges in a sustainable manner. Here, we provide a comprehensive summary of the similarities and differences in the domestication processes of maize and rice, two major staple food crops that feed the world. We propose that maize and rice might have evolved distinct genetic solutions toward domestication. Maize and rice domestication appears to be associated with distinct regulatory and evolutionary mechanisms. Rice domestication tended to select de novo, loss-of-function, coding variation, while maize domestication more frequently favored standing, gain-of-function, regulatory variation. At the gene network level, distinct genetic paths were used to acquire convergent phenotypes in maize and rice domestication, during which different central genes were utilized, orthologous genes played different evolutionary roles, and unique genes or regulatory modules were acquired for establishing new traits. Finally, we discuss how the knowledge gained from past domestication processes, together with emerging technologies, could be exploited to improve modern crop breeding and domesticate new crops to meet increasing human demands.

作物的驯化从根本上改变了人类历史的进程，导致了从狩猎采集者向农业社会的转变，并刺激了现代文明的兴起。对作物驯化的更多了解将为我们如何改良当前作物和开发新作物以可持续方式应对环境挑战提供理论依据。在这里，我们对玉米和大米的驯化过程的异同进行了全面总结，这是养活世界的两种主要主食作物。我们建议玉米和水稻可能已进化出独特的遗传解决方案，以实现驯化。玉米和水稻的驯化似乎与独特的调控和进化机制有关。水稻驯化倾向于从头开始，功能丧失，编码变异，而玉米驯化则更倾向于站立，功能获得，调控变异。在基因网络层面，采用不同的遗传途径获得玉米和水稻驯化的趋同表型，在此过程中利用了不同的中心基因，直系同源基因发挥了不同的进化作用，并获得了独特的基因或调控模块以建立新的性状。最后，我们讨论了如何利用从过去的驯化过程中获得的知识以及新兴技术来改善现代作物育种和驯化新作物，以满足人类不断增长的需求。