Trees that are
indispensably supportive to human life pose a formidable challenge to breed them
to suit to human needs. From soft drinks to breweries to beverages to oil to
tires, the value added products from trees give a spectrum of products to human
kind. While attempts to tap these resources through conventional breeding
are underway, the quick and elegant way of manipulating the genetic systems at
the genome level is an essential chapter of modern science. Books
featuring genomics of tree crops are few, and genomics is such a science that
changes rapidly. Genomics of Tree Crops is an earnest attempt towards
compiling genomics of tree crops.
Plant genomics
has made monumental strides in the last decade providing insights into
intra-genomic phenomena such as heterosis, epistasis, pleiotropy and other
interactions between loci and alleles within the genome. In contrast, the
investigation of the roles and functions of single genes is a primary focus of
molecular biology and is a common topic of modern genetic research. A
genome is the sum total of all of an individual organism's genes. Thus, genomics
is the study of all the genes of a cell, or tissue, at the DNA (genotype), mRNA
(transcriptome), or protein (proteome) levels. The complete sequencing of
the three billion base pair human genome with 25,000 genes identified and
the invention of DNA microarrays ushered in a new era in the science of
genomics leading to explosive advancements in oncology diagnostics. This
impetus into the genomics era lead the way toward advances in plant
genomics which started with Arabidopsis thaliana and went through an array of crops
such as rice, maize, papaya, various cereals and legumes, with pigeon pea added
to the list towards the end of 2011. Trees, on the other hand, are the
least attended taxa with regard to genomic research. Some of the areas
that attained attention of the scientists are: DNA sequencing, bioinformatics,
genomics of flowering, gene flow, spatial structure, local adaptation and
assisted migration in trees, transformation of fruit trees, genomics of
tropical and temperate fruit trees, genomics of Hevea rubber, genomics of
papaya and genomics of palms. Genomics of Tree Crops compiles this information with
chapters authored by experts on these crops.
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