Abstract
Cultivated almond is a tree crop producing seeds of great economic interest, adapted to hot and dry climate. Domesticated in Southeast Asia, its small diploid genome and phenotypic diversity make it an ideal model to complement the genomics studies in peach species, considered as the reference Prunus species. Actually, both species represent consanguineous species which evolved under two distinct environments, being warmer and more humid in the case of peach and colder and xerophytic for almond. The genome of almond has been fully sequenced. Subsequently, several consortiums including those in Spain, Australia and USA have completed substantial resequencing projects. These results indicate a 275 Mbp genome with substantial heterozygosity as well as repetitive sequence. The advent of affordable whole genome sequencing in combination with existing Prunus functional genomics data has enabled the leveraging of the significant novel diversity available in almond, providing an unmatched resource for the genetic improvement of this species. This proposed volume will expound the latest information on the current state of almond genomics and transcriptomics, with a particular focus on the latest findings, tools and strategies employed in genome sequencing and analysis in relation to the most important agronomic traits. Additionally, the knowledge of the whole genome sequence will allow the development in almond of the new methodology of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9, as a new strategy for breeding, alternative to the traditional methods.
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Martínez-Gómez, P., Sánchez-Pérez, R., Fernández i Martí, Á. (2023). Prospects and Future Questions. In: Sánchez-Pérez, R., Fernandez i Marti, A., Martinez-Gomez, P. (eds) The Almond Tree Genome. Compendium of Plant Genomes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30302-0_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30302-0_12
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