A PLAN FOR ALLIUM TRANSLATIONAL GENOMICS
Welcome to
AlliumCAP!! This site reports to
Allium growers, breeders, productionists, extension agents, and
processors about our efforts to establish research priorities and build support
for a proposal to USDA National Research Initiative (NRI) Competitive
Grants Program for a Coordinated Agricultural Project (CAP) on the Alliums.
Allium is a
monocot genus that contains seven major species of economic importance: the bulb onion (A. cepa) and closely
related shallot and potato onions (A. cepa var. ascalonicum),
chive (A. schoenoprasum), Chinese chive (A. tuberosum), Japanese
bunching onion (A. fistulosum), garlic (A. sativum), leek (A.
ampeloprasum), and rakkyo (A. chinense).
In addition, at least 18 other Alliums are consumed as a fresh vegetable,
pickled, or used as flavoring. The
bulb onion is the most valuable Allium with a total world production of
over 30 million metric tons (MT) per year. The
average farm value of the
What are CAP awards
?
The Coordinated Agricultural Project (CAP) awards are large-scale, multi-million dollar projects intended to promote collaboration, open communication and exchange of information, reduce duplication of effort, and coordinate activities among individuals, institutions, states, and regions. The aim of the CAP award is to encourage maximum flexibility in applied plant genomics research and to engage the applied plant science communities, both public and private, and involve them in the application of genomic approaches to U.S. crop or forestry improvement. This program concentrates applied genomic research on a single crop or forestry species each fiscal year, rather than moderate investments in many plant species. So far, CAP awards focus on large-scale translational genomics for rice, wheat, and barley. More information on the USDA-CAP initiative is available at: http://www.csrees.usda.gov/fo/fundview.cfm?fonum=1604.
What does "Translational Genomics" mean?
Genomics refer to a new approach for gene identification and manipulation made possible by deep-coverage libraries carrying the entire DNA of an organism, together with high through-put sequencing, annotation, and computer analyses. "Translational Genomics" apply genomic resources and technologies and address practical production or processing constraints in economically important plants. Enormous genomic resources have been developed for the grasses, culminating with the complete DNA sequence of economically important plants such as rice and filtered sequencing of maize. These extensive genomic resources may be key for the translational genomics of other major monocots outside of the grasses. This is especially important for the Alliums which have huge amounts of nuclear DNA, a major constraint to the development of genomic resources. For example, onion is a diploid (2n=2x=16) plant with 16,415 megabasepairs of DNA per 1C, 7 and 36-times greater than maize and rice, respectively. Garlic also has a huge nuclear genome about 7% smaller than onion.
What were the goals of the Allium CAP planning conference?
The goals of the Allium CAP conference were to strengthen contacts among public and private researchers and commodity groups for the Allium vegetables, to identify and prioritize production and processing constraints affecting onion and garlic, which will become targets for the identification of germplasms addressing these problems, as well as the development of robust molecular markers and genomic approaches to simplify incorporation of this beneficial germplasm into competitive cultivars. In order to objectively identify important production constraints for the Allium vegetables and processed products in the US, we developed a web-based survey and distributed it to growers, processors, breeders, productionists, extensionists, etc., through out North America. A pdf version of the survey can be downloaded (Allium CAP Survey.pdf); however the survey is now closed and no new responses will be accepted.
When and where was the Allium CAP planning conference held?
The Allium CAP planning conference was held on Wednesday, December 6, 2006, at College Station, Texas, a day before the National Allium Research Conference (NARC). The conference was attended by 66 members of the Allium research community, with excellent representation from both the private and public sectors. The final report of the Allium CAP Planning Conference is available as a pdf file (AlliumCAP Final Report.pdf).
Questions or Comments?
Please contact Dr. Michael J. Havey, USDA-ARS, Department of Horticulture, 1575 Linden Drive, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706 USA or mjhavey@wisc.edu