Focus on Rice： Towards Better Understanding of the Life Cycle of Crop Plants

Rice is the most widely consumed cereal for more than half of the world＇s population, especially in Asian countries. In addition to its utmost economic importance as a staple food crop, rice has become an ideal model species for biologi- cal research of monocot crop plants, because of the avail- ability of whole-genome sequences for both indica and ialJonica subspecies,