How high-throughput sequencing empowers the research of polyploidy in vegetable crops

Abstract

Vegetables are not only economically important, but also essential for a healthy human diet providing fiber, minerals and essential nutrients. All flowering plants, including many vegetable crops, are polyploids, pinpointing the significance of polyploidy in plant evolution and crop breeding. In the last two decades, the fast development of sequencing has facilitated genome wide investigation of genetic and epigenetic changes that has occurred during the polyploidization process. With the achievement of more and more high-quality plant genomes, ancient polyploidization (also known as whole genome duplication, WGD) events have frequently been seen, which is vital for the understanding of domestication and differentiation history of vegetables. Moreover, advanced joint analysis of multi-omics data has been applied for efficient elucidation of underlying molecular mechanisms of complex traits in vegetables. This paper summarizes the status for the research on vegetable polyploids facilitated by high-throughput sequencing, that improve the understanding of plant evolution and support effective vegetable breeding via polyploidy.

Keywords

• polyploid
• vegetable
• sequencing
• evolution
• breeding