It is related to the major cereal grain species wheat, barley, oats, maize, rice, rye, sorghum, and millet.

It has many qualities that make it an excellent model organism for functional genomics research in temperate grasses, cereals, and dedicated biofuel crops such as switchgrass.

[3] Although B. distachyon has little or no direct agricultural significance, it has several advantages as an experimental model organism for understanding the genetic, cellular and molecular biology of temperate grasses.

In addition, only ~21% of the Brachypodium genome consists of repetitive elements, compared to 26% in rice and ~80% in wheat, further simplifying genetic mapping and sequencing.

The International Brachypodium Initiative (IBI) held its first genomics meeting and workshop at the PAG XIV conference in San Diego, California, in January 2006.