"Sorghum only second cereal crop to be mapped"

By Jennifer Latzke

The sorghum industry had a bit more to celebrate this week than simply the 50th anniversary of the National Sorghum Producers.

At the celebration Aug. 20, on the campus of Texas Tech University, NSP leadership announced that sorghum will officially be the second cereal crop genome to be sequenced, following the recent groundbreaking sequencing of rice.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute, the same folks responsible for sequencing the human genome, will take on the task of sequencing sorghum in 2006, according to an announcement from Computation Genomics Program Head Dr. Daniel Rokhsar.

According to NSP, the project is including an international consortium of researchers led by Andrew Paterson of the University of Georgia. NSP Research Director Jeff Dahlberg remarked that the project is logical for sorghum, because it will increase the knowledge of the hereditary information of the plant.

"This is as important as the advent of sorghum hybrids 50 years ago," Dahlberg said in a statement released by NSP. "Sequencing sorghum is a critical step in building our knowledge base on how plants function and, like the use of hybrids, will allow us to make significant advancements in crop improvement for the next 50 years. This project will be valuable as we move from fundamental studies of genome organization and gene discovery to applied efforts in sorghum."

Since the genome sequencing of rice earlier this year, scientists have said that sorghum is a logical follow-up project due to its complementary nature and close genetic relation to other crops such as maize and sugarcane.

"Analysis of the levels and patterns of genomic diversity within and between sorghum, sugarcane, rice, and maize promises to advance our understanding of the biology and evolution of Poaceae grain and biomass crops, and create new opportunities for their improvement," Dahlberg said. "Sorghum is one of the world's leading grain crops, and is an important model for tropical grasses worldwide."

Dahlberg was hesitant to estimate the timeline for mapping the sorghum genome, but said there should be major progress by late 2006.

Date: 8/25/05