Musa Genomics Workshop to be held in Arlington, Virginia, Summer 2001

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Musa Genomics Workshop, Arlington VA. July 17-19 2001A Musa Genomic Consortium has been formed within the framework of the Global Program for Musa Improvement. Deciphering the banana genome is an enormous task that will require participation and collaboration of scientists around the world. The Consortium will bring together and enhance the combined expertise of the different participating laboratories. This meeting has been organised to develop the strategy for the Consortium and to plan its implementation. The Musa genome offers exciting new perspectives in studying genomic biodiversity of monocots. It has a small genome (500 to 600 Mb - only 25% larger than rice) that is highly tractable to complete functional and sequence analysis. Cultivated varieties of Musa are sterile clones that have been propagated vegetatively for thousands of years, while fertile wild diploid equivalents have been actively evolving for the same period in the same environment, ranking Musa as a unique model to study plant evolution. Sterile and fertile forms have also co-evolved with most of the Musa pathogens, creating an excellent system in which to study plant/pathogen evolution. Musa was the first species where a pararetrovirus was shown to be integrated into a plant genome, with the capacity to give rise to episomal banana streak badnavirus. Understanding the mechanism behind this phenomenon may lead to important applications, such as gene targeting. Musa is among few plant species with bi-parental cytoplasmic inheritance: paternal inheritance of mitochondria and maternal inheritance of chloroplasts. Variability in ploidy levels in Musa offers a new opportunity to gain insight to the greater-than-additive gains in crop productivity that often accompany polyploidy. Polyploids such as cotton and sugarcane contain only one type of polyploidy within the taxon, whereas Musa includes several types of autopolyploids (AAA, AAAA, AAAAAA), and allopolyploids (AAB, ABB, AABB, AAAB) in addition to diploid M. acuminata (AA) and M. balbisiana (BB) and AB hybrids.