Utilization of Crop Wild Diversity: Application of Genomics.

Crop wild relatives may contain a huge number of potentially valuable genes for crop improvement, but remain relatively untapped.  With reference genomes for crops and decreases in the cost of sequencing it has become practicable to survey the diversity contained in genetic collections and to begin to associate genetic variants with potential for crop improvement or protection.  Two examples will be presented.  The genus Oryza, which contains rice, contains more than 20 species spanning 15-20 MY of evolution.  With collaborators (www.omap.org), we have developed genomic resourced to characterize the genomes of the Oryza genus and to begin to utilize this information for rice improvement.  The second example is in the legumes were in both soybean and common bean, we are working to leverage investments in reference genomes to more efficiently find agronomically useful genetic variants contained in landraces and undomesticated ancestors.  In soybean this involves Glycine soja, the antecedent to the domesticated G. max. In common bean, surveys of landraces and wild relatives from both domestication centers have been undertaken to understand the effects of dual domestication events and the bottlenecks imposed by both domestication and selection.  These examples provide models for more efficient surveys of genetic diversity contained in crop wild relatives and issues with associating genes with phenotypes and moving those genes into crops.