Population Genomics: Crop Plants

Population genomics has revolutionized several disciplines of biology, genetic resource conservation and management, and breeding of crop plants by providing key and novel insights into population, evolutionary, ecological and conservation genetics, ecology, evolution and adaptation, and facilitating molecular breeding with an unprecedented power and accuracy. Crop plants have been domesticated from their wild progenitors over several centuries and have undergone severe genetic bottlenecks and selection sweeps. Population genomics research has unraveled novel insights into crop plants origin, evolution, demographic history, center of diversity, domestication history, genetic/genomic diversity and genetic structure of wild and domesticated populations and species, epigenomic diversity, genetic/genomic basis of domestication syndrome, genomic footprints of domestication, selection and breeding, de-domestication, speciation and admixture, taxonomy, phylogeny, ecology, biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, and ecological and climate adaptation. Population genomics has also facilitated the development of pangenomes, conservation and management of genetic diversity including in the pre-breeding and breeding programs, and genomics-assisted breeding via identifying genotype-phenotype associations and genomic selection in crop plants.         

 This pioneering book presents the advances made and potential of population genomics in addressing the above crop plants aspects of basic and applied significance and brings together leading experts in crop plants population genomics to discuss these topics in major crop plants. Genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic and plant resources available for population genomics research and challenges, opportunities and future perspectives of crop plants population genomics are also discussed.

Chapters "Population Genomics of Yams: Evolution and Domestication of Dioscorea Species" and "Population Genomics Along With Quantitative Genetics Provides a More Efficient Valorization of Crop Plant Genetic Diversity in Breeding and Pre-breeding Programs" are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Dr. Om P. Rajora

Professor

University of New Brunswick

Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management

Fredericton, NB

Canada