The cultivation of perennial rice, an early phase in Southeast Asian agriculture?

Domesticated rice, Oryza sativa L., though a perennial, is nowadays usually cultivated as an annual. This has led a number of commentators to misinterpret the historical record. The older view that rice was domesticated around the Bay of Bengal and in parts of mainland Southeast Asia has been replaced by competing views of earliest domestication in that region and in the Yangzi valley. Botanical considerations point clearly to the retention of perennial characteristics while archaeological and historical evidences point to cultivation with more than a single harvest from an initial planting – the practice of ratooning. Evidence is reviewed briefly for China and more extensively for Southeast Asia. Modern field evidence is used to support the notion that ratooning was probably more widespread in the past and that this practice may represent an early phase in the history of rice agriculture in Southeast Asia as it does in China.