"Cultivated Northern Wild Rice (NWR; ' ) is a high-value, small commodity crop grown in irrigated paddies, primarily in Minnesota and California. of the species began ∼60 years ago as demand for the nutritional grain outpaced hand-harvesting efforts from lakes and rivers in the region of the United States and Canada. Cultivated NWR cultivars are open-pollinated and highly heterogeneous and have primarily been bred for seed retention, yield, and seed size. As a lowland crop, NWR's life cycle, particularly its unique seed physiology, poses challenges to breeding efforts, limiting selection cycles per year, and requiring annual grow-outs of all germplasm. Recent efforts have increased the genomic resources available to NWR researchers, including a reference genome assembly and methodology optimization for genotyping-by-sequencing technologies. The species’ close phylogenetic relationship with white rice (') also provides a unique opportunity to utilize comparative genomic approaches to identify genes conferring agronomic traits of interest in NWR, particularly domestication traits such as seed retention. Z. palustris is an enigmatic species with regional ecological, cultural, and agricultural significance in the Great Lakes."