A team of Rutgers University (United States) scientists and international collaborators recently described the sorghum genome, in a paper published in the January 29, 2009 issue of the journal, Nature. Joachim Messing, director of the Waksman Institute at Rutgers University, and co-author of the paper, developed the “shotgun approach” that was used in the sorghum sequencing. According to the Rutgers University website article, “this approach takes into account the highly repetitive nature of large genomes including many plant species and the human genome. By using paired sequence reads instead of single sequence reads, the scientists can jump over repeat sequences, constituting about 62 percent in sorghum, and produce an accurate and contiguous picture of the entire sorghum genome”. This development paves the way for the production of better sorghum crops that can be tailored for food or biofuel applications..