Oryza sativa

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Scientific name: Oryza sativa

Common name(s): Rice

Name as shown in Phylogenes: Rice

Ploidy: Diploid

Description:

Oryza sativa or rice, is an annual grass of the Poaceae family. Originally from Asia and parts of Africa, rice is a global crop that feeds over half the human population. There are two major subspecies of rice that are grown in the world today: short grain or sticky rice (japonica or sinica varieties) and the long grain, non-sticky indica variety.

Rice is also used as powerful model for understanding gene function in other grasses. It shares a high degree of synteny with other cereal grasses and is especially valuable for understanding genome architecture, genome evolution, speciation, and domestication.

Reference(s):

International Rice Genome Sequencing Project. The map-based sequence of the rice genome. Nature. 2005 Aug 11;436(7052):793-800. doi:10.1038/nature03895

Genome Database(s):

Oryzabase

Rice Annotation Project