Syngenta, the company that published a draft sequence of the rice genome earlier this year, has agreed to a fuller release of its data.

The company's rice genome data will be transferred to the publicly funded International Rice Genome Sequencing Project (IRGSP), which is working on its own draft of the rice genome sequence. The IRGSP will incorporate the Syngenta data into its sequence, which will be deposited in public databases.

The publication of the rice genome last April led to much controversy within the scientific community, because instead of following the traditional practice of depositing the data in a public database, such as GenBank, the Syngenta group made the sequence available on its own website and on a CD-ROM (see Scientists crack rice code).

Reference: Science 296, 1785 (2002)