Introduction to Cereal

Cereals such as rice, wheat and maize are members of the grass family and they are particularly important to humans because of their role as staple food crops in many areas of the world. Cereals are also used to produce animal feed, oils, starch, flour, sugar, syrup, processed foods, malt, alcoholic beverages, gluten and renewable energy. Grasses are believed to have evolved over 60-70 million years ago. The sequencing of the rice genome provided the first reference genome for the grasses.