The single most consumed fruit in America, yet in the tropics this bananas starchy relatives play an even more vital role in feeding whole nations.
At the Plant and Animal Genome Conference next month (which I really wish I was going to), there will be a workshop on banana genomics, but from the abstract submitted by Carine Charron (h/t to Jeremy at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog) I learned that:
The sequencing phase will be completed in early 2010 and automatic annotation will take place during the first semester of 2010.
Why is sequencing the banana genome important? Three reasons: (more…)