Hot Cereal: Rice reveals bumper crop of genes

For about a third of the world’s population, rice equals life. The cereal provides more than half the daily calories that these people consume.

FIELDS OF GENES. Rice, the first crop to have its DNA decoded, covers terraces in southwestern China. Liwen Ma and Baoxing Qiu, Beijing Genomics Institute

In the April 5 Science, two research groups report that they have independently deciphered almost the complete genetic code, or genome, of rice.