New Project Aims to Decipher the Sunflower Genome

A new project funded by Genome Canada through the Government of Canada, Genome BC, US Departments of Energy and Agriculture, and France's INRA aims to sequence and analyze the sunflower genome. The genome, the scientists say, will be used as a reference genome for the sunflower (Asteraceae) family – currently the world's largest plant family, containing 24,000 species of plants, including many crops, medicinal plants, horticulture plants and noxious weeds.

The US$10.5 million research project titled, Genomics of Sunflower, will use next-generation genotyping and sequencing technologies to sequence, assemble and annotate the sunflower genome and to locate the genes that are responsible for agriculturally important traits such as seed-oil content, flowering, seed-dormancy, and wood producing-capacity.

Sunflower is an important crop. Sunflower seed production alone is valued at about USD14 billion annually. "The sunflower genome is 3.5 billion letters long, slightly larger than the human genome. The sunflower family is the largest plant family on earth, encompassing several important crops and weeds. Mapping its genome will create a very useful reference template for the entire plant family, which will enable us to work on closely related species," says Nolan Kane, one of the co-investigators of the project.

Read http://www.genomebc.ca/whatnew_press/press_releases/2010_press/011210_sunflower.htm for the original story.