Current status of banana genome in the age of next generation sequencing

Abstract

Banana (Musa spp.) is the “queen of tropical fruits." It is one of the major staple fruits in many countries. The banana improvement program is challenging due to its complex evolutionary events, human selection, and parthenocarpy. Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana are the progenitor species for majority of the modern cultivated bananas. The only way to accelerate the banana breeding program is to understand its genome and employing marker-assisted selection. Recently sequencing of the 523 Mb genome of a Musa acuminata - DH-Pahang provided a great fillip to the banana improvement program. Banana genome sequencing revealed the presence of around 36,000 protein coding regions, and transposable elements accounted for more than half of the genome. Earlier attempts of Bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) sequencing of both these species showed a high degree of collinearity. In this chapter, we have summarized the current status of our understanding of the banana genome with respect to classical linkage mapping approach as well as modern next-generation sequencing approach.