National Institute of Plant Genome Research, Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, New Delhi, India.
Crit Rev Biotechnol. 2013 Sep;33(3):328-43. doi: 10.3109/07388551.2012.716809. Epub 2012 Sep 18.
Foxtail millet is one of the oldest domesticated diploid C4 Panicoid crops having a comparatively small genome size of approximately 515 Mb, short life cycle, and inbreeding nature. Its two species, Setaria italica (domesticated) and Setaria viridis (wild progenitor), have characteristics that classify them as excellent model systems to examine several aspects of architectural, evolutionary, and physiological importance in Panicoid grasses especially the biofuel crops such as switchgrass and napiergrass. Foxtail millet is a staple crop used extensively for food and fodder in parts of Asia and Africa. In its long history of cultivation, it has been adapted to arid and semi-arid areas of Asia, North Africa, South and North America. Foxtail millet has one of the largest collections of cultivated as well as wild-type germplasm rich with phenotypic variations and hence provides prospects for association mapping and allele-mining of elite and novel variants to be incorporated in crop improvement programs. Most of the foxtail millet accessions can be primarily abiotic stress tolerant particularly to drought and salinity, and therefore exploiting these agronomic traits can enhance its efficacy in marker-aided breeding as well as in genetic engineering for abiotic stress tolerance. In addition, the release of draft genome sequence of foxtail millet would be useful to the researchers worldwide in not only discerning the molecular basis of biomass production in biofuel crops and the methods to improve it, but also for the introgression of beneficial agronomically important characteristics in foxtail millet as well as in related Panicoid bioenergy grasses.
谷子是最古老的栽培二倍体 C4 类蜀黍属作物之一，其基因组大小相对较小，约为 515Mb，具有较短的生命周期和近亲繁殖的特性。它的两个种，狗尾草（栽培种）和野黍（野生原种），具有将其分类为研究类蜀黍属植物在形态、进化和生理方面的极好模式系统的特征，特别是能源作物，如柳枝稷和象草。谷子是一种主食作物，在亚洲和非洲部分地区被广泛用于食品和饲料。在其悠久的栽培历史中，它已适应了亚洲、北非、南美和北美干旱和半干旱地区的环境。谷子拥有最大的栽培和野生类型种质资源集合之一，这些资源富含表型变异，因此为关联图谱和等位基因挖掘提供了前景，以将优秀和新颖的变体整合到作物改良计划中。大多数谷子品种对非生物胁迫具有较强的耐受性，特别是耐旱性和耐盐性，因此利用这些农艺性状可以提高其在标记辅助选择和非生物胁迫耐受遗传工程中的效果。此外，谷子的草图基因组序列的发布将对全球的研究人员非常有用，不仅有助于了解生物燃料作物生物量生产的分子基础及其改进方法，还有助于在谷子以及相关的类蜀黍属生物能源作物中导入有益的农艺重要特征。
