Sample seeds from among the 127,000 rice accessions stored in the International Rice Genebank at the International Rice Research Institute. Genomes of 186 Bangladeshi rice varieties have been sequenced in Beijing Genomics Institute, China as part of a global collaborative project, opening up new opportunities for varietal developments.

These include rice germplasms, high yielding varieties (HYV) and advanced lines. Germplasm is the living genetic resources such as seeds or tissue that is maintained for the purpose of animal and plant breeding, preservation and other research uses. Rice breeders and scientists are elated at the latest development of rice genomics. They believe this new understanding of rice gene pool would help them breed new generation rice varieties that are more productive, stress tolerant, less environmentally damaging and more climate-smart.A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA that contains all of the information needed to build and maintain that organism. A genome sequence is like an inbuilt instruction book that tells living organisms how to grow and react to the environment.Each rice plant has about 400 million "genetic letters" in its genome sequence while the human genome is made up of over 3 billion of such letters.

The genome sequencing of 186 Bangladeshi rice varieties comes as part of an international collaboration -- 3K RGP (3,000 Rice Genomes Project) -- that accomplished the decoding of 3,000 rice varieties of 89 countries.   Three research institutions -- the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) Shenzhen and the IRRI -- collaborated to sequence the genomes of 3,000 rice varieties and lines stored in the IRRI (82%) and the CAAS (18%) gene banks. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology jointly funded the sequencing and the initial analysis.Of the 186 decoded Bangladeshi rice breeds, seeds of 179 germplasms and four advanced breeding lines were taken from the IRRI gene bank while seeds of two high-yielding varieties (BR11 and BR24) and one advanced line were taken from the CAAS collection.

The homegrown traditional varieties include Binnaful, Hijol Digha, Jabor Sail, Kalabokri, Lal Moti, Pankhiraj, Badshabhog, Kushiara, Dhola Aman, Birui Sail and Sada Jira. BRRI has a collection of about 8,000 rice germplasms in its own gene depository and duplicate copies of this gene pool are also stored at the IRRI gene bank, Seed Storage Laboratory at Fort Collins, Colorado in USA and Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.With 127,000 rice accessions the IRRI maintains the biggest collection of rice genetic diversity in the world at the International Rice Genebank in the Philippines. Countries from all over the world send their rice to the IRRI for safe keeping and common public good.

Last week, the Philippines-based IRRI formally placed all the genome maps of 3,000 rice varieties with the UN FAO-based International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) in Rome in a move to set up a global data exchange system for crop genetic resources.This new 3K RGP data analysis set is massive at 120 terabytes, which is well beyond the computing capacities of most research institutions. However, these new results are now publicly available online as an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Data Set. BRRI sources said they have so far downloaded genome maps of 10 varieties and would access others gradually.  

Some BRRI scientists said they would not be able to make the best out of the huge genome resources unless they are equipped with powerful internet servers, computers and better trained manpower in bioinformatics.Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that combines computer science, statistics, mathematics and engineering to analyse and interpret biological data.There is not a single bioinformatician at the BRRI at the moment.