The Importance of Rice

In this issue, we publish two sequences for the rice genome: one for each of the two major rice varieties (japonica and indica) planted around the world. The value of having this information in the public domain rests on the hundreds of millions of people who depend on rice and whose nutritional status and health may be improved as a result. Not only are more calories obtained worldwide from rice than from any other single food, but the rice sequence affords entry into the similar but larger genomes of the other cereal grains on which the world depends. In their introductory Perspective on p. 53, the directors general of the two great international crop research centers point out that the value of many decades' worth of publicly owned germ plasm, obtained by generations of skillful plant breeders, will be enhanced and protected.