3,000 rice genome sequences made publicly available on World Hunger Day

The open-access, open-data journal GigaScience, announces today the publication of an article on the genome sequencing of 3000 rice strains along with the release of this entire dataset in a citable format in journal's affiliated open-access database, GigaDB.

The publication and release of this enormous data set (which quadruples the current amount of publicly available rice sequence data) coincides with World Hunger Day to highlight one of the primary goals of this project— to develop resources that will aid in improving global food security, especially in the poorest areas of the world.

This work is the completion of stage one of the 3000 Rice Genomes Project, a collaborative effort made up of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and BGI, and is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.

With more than 1/8th of the world's population living in extreme hunger and poverty, and an every-increasing world population (estimated to reach 9.6 billion by 2050), there is a huge need to create new resources to improve crop yield, reduce the impact of agricultural practices on the environment, and develop food crops that are of high yield and nutrition and can grow successfully in environments stressed by drought, pests, diseases, or poor soil quality. While rice research has greatly advanced since the completion of the first high-quality rice genome sequence in 2005, there has been limited change in breeding practices that are important for producing improved and better adapted rice strains.

The 3000 Rice Genomes Project provides a major step forward for addressing these challenges by creating and releasing an extensive amount of genetic information that can ultimately be applied to intelligent breeding practices.