17 Oryza meyeriana Baill Kutubuddin Ali Molla, Subhasis Karmakar, Johiruddin Molla, T. P. Muhammed Azharudheen and Karabi Datta Abstract Wild relatives of cultivated rice (Oryza sativa and Oryza glaberrima) are treasure trove to the modern breeders as they contain valuable characteristics to improve cultivated rice spe- cially to make them adaptable to climate change. Oryza meyeriana is one of the key species of Meyeriana complex of Oryza genus, mostly grown in South Asian coun- tries, which is well known for its tolerance to many different biotic and abiotic stresses. The species was mostly explored for bacterial blight resistance. As the species contains GG genome, it is not readily crossable to the cultivated rice (AA). The chapter describes and discusses the probable reason for cross- ability barrier of O. meyeriana with O. sativa, way to overcome the barrier by asymmetric somatic hybridization (ASH), development of hybrid progenies and their utilization to map QTL and gene for bacterial blight resistance. All recent transcriptomic and proteomic stud- ies with O. meyeriana to identify novel genomic resources for disease resistance are reviewed, and potential future prospects were mentioned. 17.1 Academic and Economic Importance Rice is the most important cereal in terms of human consumption. Oryza sativa (Asian rice) and Oryza glaberrima (African rice) are the two Oryza species cultivated worldwide. However, there are around 24 other known species designated to Oryza genus. Those species are of tremendous potential to be used as valuable genetic resources for the improve- ment of cultivated rice. Due to the absence of distinct taxonomic key characters, sometimes it is very dif ficult to clearly set boundary lines among the members of a group of species; this group is called a species complex. Broadly, there are four different species complexes, viz. Sativa, Of ficinalis, Ridleyi and Meyeriana, designated under the genus Oryza (Tateoka 1962; Vaughan 1994). Names of a total of five species, viz. Oryza granulata, Oryza meyeriana, Oryza indandamanica, Oryza abromeitiana and Oryza neocaledonica, have K. A. Molla (&) Á T. P.M. Azharudheen ICAR-National Rice Research Institute, Cuttack 753006, Orissa, India e-mail: kutubuddin.molla@icar.gov.in S. Karmakar Á J. Molla Á K. Datta Department of Botany, University of Calcutta, 35-Ballygunge Circular Road, Kolkata 700019, West Bengal, India © Springer International Publishing AG 2018 T. K. Mondal and R. J. Henry (eds.), The Wild Oryza Genomes, Compendium of Plant Genomes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71997-9_17 183