AVOCADO GENOME SEQUENCING PROJECT

Avocado (Persea americana) is a tropical and subtropical tree species with a center of genetic diversity and domestication in Mesoamerica. The avocado fruit is unique because in contrast to most other fleshy fruits, it accumulates oil instead of sugar giving a high nutritional and industrial value. Avocado has a high content of healthy mono and poly unsatured fats, beneficial sterols and secondary metabolites with antioxidant and antineoplasic activity. México is the largest producer and consumer of avocados worldwide, producing about five times more than the annual output of its nearest competitors. However, avocado yield in México is low due to high incidence of disease (mainly caused by Phythophthora and Colletotrichum) and insect pests as well as the lack of high yielding varieties. Due to a long vegetative period of about 6 to 8 years, and the difficulties to carry out directed crosses, avocado breeding is rather complex. Knowledge of the 980 Mb avocado genome and related genetic diversity will provide important information and molecular tools to facilitate and make more efficient and effective breeding programs and also give us the oportunity to examine the developmental genetics of fleshy fruits and some of the mechanisms of early adaptations in flowering plants. The avocado sequencing project builds on a combined several massive sequencing strategies: BACs paired-end (PE), single-end (SE) and PE 454 reads from Roche GS platforms, and PE reads from SOLiD sequencer. Assembly and annotation of the sequence data was performed using publicly available tools. We have completed a draft of the avocado genome, the current estimate suggests that the avocado genome contains about 34,000 genes; 29,345 with evidence of transcriptional activity. A broad genetic diversity of avocado exists in México which can be used to identify genes involved in important traits such as fruit quality and tree size by association mapping.