The conservation of gene order in the grasses is good enough to make predictions of the locations of genes in these crop species, although the level of resolution depends on the closeness of the relationship between the species being compared.

The rice genome is more like the ancestral grass genome than those of the other cereals. Major chromosomal rearrangements have taken place during the evolution of the other grasses.

Key point: The extensive resources developed in rice and other main-stream crop species, such as sequence and other types of data, can be taken advantage of by those working in related species where fewer resources are available.