A consortium of researchers from Australia’s The University of Queensland and the Queensland Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF Qld) and China’s Beijing Genomics Institute has discovered that sorghum, a drought-tolerant African crop, has more genetic variation than previously reported.

Through whole-genome sequencing, the team obtained the genomic data of 44 sorghum lines to represent all major races of cultivated grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) in addition to its progenitors and the allopatric Asian species, S. propinquum. The analysis showed that sorghum has a diverse primary gene pool but with decreased diversity in both landrace and improved groups. In addition to S. bicolor, a great untapped pool of diversity also exists in S. propinquum, and the first resequenced genome of S. propinquum was presented.

The researchers’ analyses revealed that sorghum has a strong racial structure and a complex domestication history involving at least two distinct domestication events. More importantly, they found that modern cultivated sorghum was derived from a limited sample of racial variation. The study identified 8M high-quality SNPs, 1.9M indels and specific gene loss and gain events in S. bicolor, providing the largest dataset obtained in sorghum to date.

For more, read the news release at: http://www.genomics.cn/en/news/show_news?nid=99653.