Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
markers associated with diverse traits and creating new opportunities for
the species betterment or treatment (Edwards and Batley 2010). In excess
of 25 angiosperm genomes (crops and wild relatives) have been
sequenced to date (Hamilton and Buell 2012; Varshney et al. 2013)
—
alfalfa, apple,
Arabidopsis
,
Brachypodium
, banana, barley, cacao,
cassava, chickpea, diploid South American cotton
Gossypium raimon-
dii
, foxtail millet, grape,
Lotus japonicus
, maize, marijuana,
Medicago
truncatula
, melon, peach, pigeonpea, potato, rice, sorghum, soybean,
strawberry, sweet orange, tomato, watermelon, and wheat
and many
others are underway. The availability of genome sequence is valuable
resource for genome mapping, marker development, and molecular
breeding (Pérez-de-Castro et al. 2012 and the references therein). Fur-
thermore, it also allows resequencing elite genetic stocks with contrast-
ing phenotypes of a given crop species. The sequence variation among
these genetic stocks could then be related to phenotypic differences, as
detected in maize inbreds and hybrids (Lai et al. 2010). The deployment
of new-generation sequencing technologies will further accelerate effi-
—
-
cient and precise identi
cation and tracking of thousands of genetic
variants in the populations at much reduced cost (Hamilton and Buell
2012; Pérez-de-Castro et al. 2012).
The Peanut Genome Consortium (PGC), a coalition of international
scientists and stakeholders (135 members at 79 institutions in 20 coun-
tries), is engaged with the Peanut Genome Project (PGP) (
http://www
.peanutbioscience.com
)
. The PGP is composed of six research compo-
nents that are necessary for generating useful tools of the genome
sequence for research and crop breeding: (i) a high-quality reference
genome sequence of cultivated peanut, and high-density maps of
both progenitor and synthetic amphidiploid genomes; (ii) characteriza-
tion of gene space in amphidiploids and diploid (progenitor) germplasm;
(iii) high-throughput transcriptome characterization of the reference
tetraploid cultivar; (iv) evaluation and potential application of advances
in DNA sequencing technology in the Peanut Genome Project; (v) pheno-
typic association with mapped genetic markers: and (vi) bioinformatics
resources for data storage and application in a breeder
'
s toolbox to enable
molecular breeding.
The Beijing Genomics Institute has been given the task to sequence
and initially assemble the peanut genome. The reference peanut genome
sequence will be available in the next 2 or 3 years through a multi-
disciplinary cooperative research among researchers involved from
Brazil, China, India, the United States, and other countries that deploy
advances in genomic technology. It is expected that with the completion
of this project, the researchers will be able to pyramid multiple traits
