More than half of the world's population depends on rice as a principal source of calories and nutrition. And from a scientific perspective, the genome of this prolific grain offers clues for others, including corn, wheat, and barley. While its cereal cousins dwarf rice's 400-Mb genome, nearly all of the proteins found in these other staples have homologs in rice. As such, rice serves as a model for all cereal agriculture. Unraveling its code may enable scientists to address world hunger in new ways.