Sorghum TILLING.

Due to its excellent tolerance to drought/high temperature stresses and low soil fertility, sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) has emerged as a promising bioenergy crop due to its excellent tolerance to drought/heat stresses.� Completion of the sorghum genome sequence has opened new avenues for sorghum functional genomics.� However, the availability of genetic resources, specifically mutant lines, is limited.� Chemical mutagenesis of sorghum germplasm, followed by screening for mutants altered in important agronomic traits, represents a rapid and effective means of addressing this limitation.� We have created a sorghum mutant library consisting of �>5000 pedigreed M₄ lines through single seed descent from M1 in the elite inbred line BTx623 that was used for sequencing the genome. The mutant library displays a wide range of mutant phenotype in morphological, physiological, and agronomic traits (http://www.lbk.ars.usda.gov/psgd/index-sorghum.aspx). Many mutants, such as brown midrib and erect leaf, have potential applications in improving the biomass yield and quality of sorghum. Recently, we have established a high throughput reverse genetic platform to identify mutant series for genes with known sequence through TILLING (targeting induced local lesions in genome). Our TILLING platform uses none-labeled primers that can be optimized in users' lab.� Several genes have been TILLED using this platform. We intend to make the TILLING platform accessible to public for collaborative research.