After 12 grueling (pun intended) years and 16 billion yen from the Japanese government, the rice genome project has come to a close. Headed by Takuji Sasaki of the Japanese National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, the international team from 10 countries has finished mapping some 50,000 genes in the Japanese rice variety, Nippon Bare.
With this information, the scientists now turn to the elucidation of the genes’ functions, with the hopes of improving crop development someday.