New database helps breeders find sorghum's best genes faster
Grant N, Chan YO, Mahmood A, Biová J, Škrabišová M
Crop Improvement
Sorghum feeds hundreds of millions of people in hot, dry regions where other grains fail, and this free tool helps breeders find the genetic traits, like drought resilience or a naturally fragrant grain, that make new varieties worth planting.
Sorghum is a tough, drought-hardy grain crop that hasn't gotten the same genetic research attention as corn or wheat. Researchers built a searchable online database, SorghumHub, that lets anyone look up genetic differences across nearly 1,000 sorghum plant samples and connect them to real traits, like when a plant flowers or whether its grain smells fragrant. They even found a rare gene variant that could lead to scented sorghum, similar to fragrant rice varieties people already love.
Key Findings
SorghumHub adds a curated Allele Catalog Tool covering variant data from 988 resequenced sorghum accessions
New Protein Sequence Logos tool visualizes missense amino acid changes for conservation and frequency analysis
Researchers identified candidate alleles for flowering-time gene SbFT12 and a rare missense BADH2 variant linked to potential grain fragrance
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists built a free online tool called SorghumHub that lets researchers search nearly 1,000 sorghum plant genomes to find genetic variants linked to traits like flowering time and grain fragrance, speeding up the breeding of hardier, better sorghum crops.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
SorghumHub: featuring the next phase for the KBCommons web portal with new molecular biology features.
Genomic resources for underutilized crops like sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] often lag behind major staples, hindering efforts to link genetic diversity to agronomic traits. Improvements in...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
Species Mentioned
Was this useful?
Want to tell us more? (optional)
Thanks for the note!
Something went wrong — please try again.
Too many submissions. Try again in an hour.
Targeted knockout of a host peroxisomal peptidase confers field resistance to...
The corn in your grocery store and the staple food keeping millions of East African families fed is under serious threat from a viral disease that can wipe o...
Sorghum bicolor, commonly called sorghum and also known as broomcorn, great millet, Indian millet, Guinea corn, jowar, or milo, is a species in the grass genus Sorghum. It is typically an annual, but some cultivars are perennial. It grows in clumps that may reach over 4 metres (13 ft) high. The g...