Authors
Muluneh Tamiru, Satoshi Natsume, Hiroki Takagi, Benjamen White, Hiroki Yaegashi, Motoki Shimizu, Kentaro Yoshida, Aiko Uemura, Kaori Oikawa, Akira Abe, Naoya Urasaki, Hideo Matsumura, Pachakkil Babil, Shinsuke Yamanaka, Ryo Matsumoto, Satoru Muranaka, Gezahegn Girma, Antonio Lopez-Montes, Melaku Gedil, Ranjana Bhattacharjee, Michael Abberton, P Lava Kumar, Ismail Rabbi, Mai Tsujimura, Toru Terachi, Wilfried Haerty, Manuel Corpas, Sophien Kamoun, Günter Kahl, Hiroko Takagi, Robert Asiedu, Ryohei Terauchi
Publication date
2017/12
Journal
BMC biology
Volume
15
Pages
1-20
Publisher
BioMed Central
Description
Background
Root and tuber crops are a major food source in tropical Africa. Among these crops are several species in the monocotyledonous genus Dioscorea collectively known as yam, a staple tuber crop that contributes enormously to the subsistence and socio-cultural lives of millions of people, principally in West and Central Africa. Yam cultivation is constrained by several factors, and yam can be considered a neglected “orphan” crop that would benefit from crop improvement efforts. However, the lack of genetic and genomic tools has impeded the improvement of this staple crop.
Results
To accelerate marker-assisted breeding of yam, we performed genome analysis of white Guinea yam (Dioscorea rotundata) and assembled a 594-Mb genome, 76.4% of which was distributed among 21 linkage groups. In total, we predicted 26,198 genes …
Scholar articles
M Tamiru, S Natsume, H Takagi, B White, H Yaegashi… - BMC biology, 2017