Plant & Animal Genomes XIV Conference Plant & Animal Genomes XIV ConferenceJanuary 14-18, 2006
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA
Bananas in the broad sense, especially cooking bananas and plantains, are a vital staple food and source of income for hundreds of millions of people in developing countries. Fungal and bacterial diseases represent a constant threat to their production, yet conventional breeding for resistance is constrained by the high level of sterility of most cultivars, while progress in genetic transformation has been slowed by our lack of basic knowledge of the banana genome. Banana researchers are pooling their resources in Global Musa Genomics Consortium and proceeding step-by-step to advance their knowledge by sequencing studies, to understand the organization of their crop’s genome.
Bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) libraries derived from both sterile polyploidy cultivars and fertile diploid M. acuminata (‘Calcutta 4') and M. balbisiana (‘Pisang Klutuk Wulung’) are a basic shared resource of the Consortium, which now comprises some 21 member organizations from 16 countries. At the Institute of Experimental Botany (IEB) in Czech Republic where the Consortium holds the Musa Genome Resource Center administrated by INIBAP, fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) studies with labeled BAC clones, along with ribosomal DNA probes, now permit the identification of chromosomes of M. acuminata.
Although research on the banana genome still has a long way to go, the Consortium approach has allowed considerable progress to be made with very limited resources. Consortium members are now active participants in the Generation Challenge Programme which is allowing a common set of markers to be developed for better characterization of banana genetic resources, as well as supporting further comparative genomics studies between banana and other monocots.