ABSTRACT
Cereals are a major food source for most of the human population as measured in calories (Xu et al. 2005), and account for 173 kg/person/year of food intake in developing countries. They provide more than 50% of the calories consumed directly by the human populations and make up 44% of animal feed as an indirect source of energy (https://www. fao.org/docrep/006/Y4683E/y4683e06.htm#TopOfPage). Among the cereals, rice is one of the most important crops that feeds more than half of the world population (Khush 1997). Rice production is also a major source of livelihood as it is one of the most valuable and economically viable crops in Asia. It is planted on about 154 million hectares annually, which is equal to 11% of the world’s cultivable land (Khush 2005). Rice is not only an economically valuable crop, but also an important model cereal for understanding crop
science on account of its relatively small genome size (~430Mb), availability of high-quality genome sequences, annotated genes and their mRNA, and protein products. Available rice genome information (DNA sequences and expression data) is used as a reference to improve other cereals such as barley, maize and sorghum (Xu et al. 2005; Cai et al. 2012).
