Crop breeders have harnessed polyploidy to increase fruit and flower size, and confer stress tolerance traits. Using a Brachypodium model system, researchers have sought to learn the origins, evolution and development of plant polyploids. The work recently appeared in Nature Communications.

High quality genomes of the five major cotton lineages have been assembled by a multi-institutional team and are available for comparative analysis on JGI’s plant data portal Phytozome. “The goal has been for all this new cotton work, and even the original cotton project was to try to bring in molecular methods of breeding into cotton,” said JGI Plant Program head Jeremy Schmutz.

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