Nipponbare

Nipponbare is a temperate japonica cultivar developed in Japan. Temperate japonica rices are typically short-grained, adapted to temperate growing conditions, and associated with a sticky, tender cooked texture, in contrast to the long-grain indica rices of the tropics. AgricultureID does not assert a specific release year or breeding institution for Nipponbare, as these details are not reproduced here from an authoritative primary registry.

Botanical taxon

Oryza sativa (temperate japonica group)

Origin

Japan

Grain type

Short, round japonica grain

Cooked texture

Sticky and tender, typical of temperate japonica rice

Nipponbare is the cultivar whose genome was sequenced by the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project, with the map-based sequence published in 2005. This high-quality, map-based assembly became the standard reference to which other rice genomes, genes, and markers are compared. As a result, Nipponbare is one of the most intensively studied plants in crop science and is a routine reference in rice molecular genetics.

Rice was the first crop cereal to have a high-quality reference genome of this kind, partly because of its relatively compact genome and its central importance as a food crop. Nipponbare’s reference role is the main reason a Japanese table-rice cultivar is so widely cited in international research.

As a food crop, Nipponbare is a short-grain japonica table rice suited to temperate conditions. Its wider importance, however, is as a research reference. It is treated here as a historical and reference cultivar; its current commercial cultivation and registry standing in any particular country are not asserted on this page.