Rice : a central genome for the genetics of all cereals.
2001
Gale, M. | Moore, G. and Devos, K.
The past 15 years have seen an intense research drive to apply the new molecular biology to rice. Initiatives such as the Rockefeller Foundation's International Program on Rice Biotechnology, begun in the mid-1980s, have been underpinned by the in-depth corporate knowledge of the crop built up by research organizations in Southeast Asia such as the International Rice Research Institute and accelerated by the application of a vast, and previously uncoordinated, research capacity in national programs in the area. Moreover, unlike the other two 500-million-ton crops, wheat and maize, rice has a small tractable genome, and the development of genetic and genomic tools not available in any other cereal has ensured the promotion of rice as a favored research target. On top of all this, the discovery that gene content and gene order - genome colinearity - have been maintained over the whole grass family, which includes all cereals and many forage crops, has elevated rice still further to the status of a "model" organism. The initiation of genomic DNA sequencing efforts in the public and private sector will further ensure rice's central position in plant science. In this chapter, we will describe the ways in which rice genomic tools and knowledge of the rice genome are already being applied in research on the other major cereals, wheat and maize. Moreover, many aspects of rice genetics can be transferred to the "orphan" crops, the several minor economic grass species that have not themselves warranted extensive research and breeding.
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