A complete assembly of the rice Nipponbare reference genome

In 2005, the current commonly used rice reference genome (Oryza sativa ssp. japonica cv. Nipponbare) was initially released by the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project (International Rice Genome Sequencing Project, 2005). Thereafter, the reference genome was further updated in 2013 with improved genome assembly (IRGSP-1.0) and gene annotations (MSU7, RAP-DB) (Kawahara et al., 2013; Sakai et al., 2013). In the past 10 years, this reference has been serving as one of the most important genetic resources for subsequent rice functional genomics efforts.