BECOMING A MODEL-PLANT - THE IMPORTANCE OF RICE TO PLANT-SCIENCE

Rice has been cultivated as a major crop for more than 7000 years, and it currently sustains more than half the world population. Rice and m any other food plants are monocotyledons - such plants are of clear im portance, and yet they are distinct from the dicotyledonous model plan t Arabidopsis in many aspects of development. Recent advances in resea rch on rice include efficient transformation, the creation of a highly saturated molecular map, and the large-scale analysis of expressed se quence tags, Indeed, the number of complementary DNAs analyzed in rice is approaching the number analyzed in Arabidopsis. Rice has reached t he point where it can be usefully considered a model monocotyledonous plant.