Pedigree records show that many high-yielding Chinese japonica varieties, including Shennong 265, were derived from the Italian land race Balilla13,15, which was extensively cultivated in Italy in the 1970s and introduced into China in 1958 (ref. 15). The allelic constitution at the DEP1 locus was explored by resequencing from a panel of widely cultivated Chinese varieties (69 japonica and 83 indica). This truncated mutation was present in Balilla and all 36 japonica types having an erect or semierect panicle, including super high-yielding cultivars Liaojing 5 and Qianchonglang, but it was absent from all the other varieties. Thus, this natural allelic variation in DEP1 has clearly been exploited by japonica breeding programs in China. Several sequence variants at the DEP1 C terminus were present in the sample of indica types. The variety 93-11 differed from the japonica variety Nipponbare by three amino acids, whereas that of the variety Teqing differed by two amino acids (Supplementary Fig. 8 online). The Nipponbare sequence differed from that of an accession of Oryza rufipogon by one nucleotide at position 663, but this did not produce a variant peptide.