November 12, 2002

CSIRO Plant Industry is facilitating an international effort to decode the meaning of each rice gene at the 'Towards Building a Global Rice Gene Machine' workshop in Canberra, 11-12 November 2002.

"Advances we make in identifying what each rice gene does will help develop better varieties of rice with features like improved nutritional value, higher yields and improved pest and disease resistance," says Dr Liz Dennis, Program Leader, CSIRO Plant Industry.

In the future these new rice varieties could also help rice growers in Australia and across the world improve the sustainability of their rice production.

In 2002 the majority of the rice genome - all the genes of rice - was sequenced. Scientists have since predicted that rice has around 40,000 genes.

"Sequencing the rice genome is like having all the words in a dictionary without any definitions," says Dr Dennis. "The next step is to identify the definitions of the words, or in our case, find out what each rice gene does."

According to Workshop Convenor, CSIRO Plant Industry's Dr Narayana Upadhyaya, solving the mysteries of the rice genome will require a major international team effort.

"If we were working by ourselves it would take us an almost impossible amount of time to identify what
each of these rice genes is responsible for," says Dr Upadhyaya.

"But through the 'Global Rice Gene Machine' we will bring together rice researchers from around the world to work on this problem collectively and aim to identify the meanings of all the rice genes in five to ten years."