Genomics of Functional and Nutritional Traits in Cereals

Human selection of cereals as foods has involved selection of characteristics that are attractive to humans in food processing and in the texture and flavour of the food.  Rice starch properties are controlled by genes involved in starch biosynthesis. Amplicon sequencing has been used to sequence these genes in rice breeding lines to allow associations with starch quality traits to be explored. Variation in rice wild relatives was used to explore the impact of human selection. Analysis of sorghum starch gene variation suggests that similar mutations may have been selected by humans in different cereal species. Wheat quality is determined more by proteins in the grain. Transcript sequencing was used to identify the genes expressed in the two main tissues in the developing grain the starchy endosperm and the aleurone.   Highly differentially expressed genes that may explain major differences in quality were identified.