Genomics of crop plant genetic resources

Abstract

Plant genetic resources collection and utilization had made a huge impact in balancing the genetic diversity of the existing crop plant species and their application in genome based studies had also increased widely. Primarily studies were based on model species, although it now enhances the transferability of information to crops and related species. With the tremendous outbreak of new high-throughput technologies like next-generation sequencing (NGS) and reduction in their costs are bringing many more plants within the range of genome and transcriptome level analysis. The completion of reference genome sequences for many important crops and the ability to perform high-throughput resequencing are providing opportunities for improving our understanding of the crop plant genetic resources to accelerate crop improvement. The future of crop improvement will be centred on comparisons of individual crop plant genomes, and some of the best opportunities may lie in using combinations of new genetic mapping strategies and evolutionary analyses to direct and optimize the discovery and use of genetic variation. Here I review the importance of crop plant genetic resources and insights that have been emerged in recent years.