In the past half century, production of major food crops in the world has kept pace with the population increase. The yields of major cereals such as maize, rice and wheat have been more than doubled in most parts of the world and even tripled in certain countries. However, food production is facing even greater challenges in the next half century because of high demands in both quantity and quality, and ever increasing pressures on resources and environments. At the same time, advances in genomics, biotechnology and genetic studies have brought about unprecedented opportunities for crop genetic improvement. Rice is a major food crop feeding approximately half of the world’s population, and has provided a model system for cereal research. In my presentation, I will describe the demands for increased production for future needs, address the main issues that we have encountered as challenges, present current progress in rice functional genomics research, and provide prospect on how the advance in research can be translated into technologies and activities for rice genetic improvement.