The rice genome and the minor grains.

RONALD P. CANTRELL AND TIMOTHY G. Reeves (“The cereal of the world’s poor takes center stage,” Perspectives, 5 April, p. 53) correctly point out that the availability of the rice genome sequence has the potential to contribute to food security through the improvement of rice, the staple crop in the diets of half the world’s population. They also point to its contribution to future improvement of maize, wheat, and other major commercial grains. A further boon will be felt through its contribution to improvement of the “minor” grains such as tef, sorghum, and the millets. The world’s commercial grain crops have been the focus of enormous public and private investment. The minor grains also feed millions and are a key to food security for the poorest in Asia and Africa. These grains are culturally valued, adapted to harsh environments, nutritious, and diverse in terms of their genetic, agroclimatic, and economic niches. Research on these crops, however, has been severely underinvested, receiving minimal attention by advanced laboratories relative to their importance for the world’s poorest regions. As a result, and because of the close evolutionary relationships among all of the domesticated grain crops [a point well made by Jan Leach et al. (“Why finishing the rice genome matters,” Letters, 5 April, p. 45) and Jeffrey Bennetzen (“Opening the door to comparative plant biology,” Perspectives, 5 April, p. 60)], it is in these crops, too, where the rice sequence will have a significant food security payoff. ROBERT M. GOODMAN,1* ROSAMUND NAYLOR,2 HAILU TEFERA ,3 REBECCA NELSON,4 WALTER FALCON2 1University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1630 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA. 2Center for Environmental Science and Policy, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305–6055, USA. 3Ethiopian Agricultural Research Organisation, Debra Zeit, Ethiopia. 4Department of Plant Pathology, Plant Science Building, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. *To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected]