Oryza sativa, having the common name Asian cultivated rice, is the much more common of the two rice species cultivated as a cereal, the other species being O. glaberrima, African rice. It was first domesticated in the Yangtze River basin in China 13,500 to 8,200 years ago.
Oryza sativa belongs to the genus Oryza and the BOP clade in the grass family Poaceae. With a genome consisting of 430 Mbp across 12 chromosomes, it is renowned for being easy to genetically modify and is a model organism for the study of the biology of cereals and monocots.
