Rice is now the model plant for genetic research on crop plants; and those who work on rice do so not only to help grow and eat it, but also to advance the frontiers of genetics and molecular biology. Progress made in the last 20 years, since the first International Rice Genetics Symposium (IRGS), has made rice the organism of choice for research on crop plants, and it has become a reference genome. This volume is a collection of the papers presented at the Fifth IRGS in 2005. It reports the latest developments in the field and includes research on breeding, mapping of genes and quantitative trait loci, identification and cloning of candidate genes for biotic and abiotic stresses, gene expression, as well as genomic databases and mutant induction for functional genomics.