Advances in Sweetpotato and Yam Genomics

A changing world with ever-increasing requirements for food will require acceleration of productivity increases, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. A key element of this will be breeding for higher productivity.  For crops with relatively short breeding histories such as cassava, sweetpotato, and yam, presumably significant yield increases could be achieved in relatively few breeding cycles. This could be further accelerated by modern tools of breeding, including molecular tools, of which an anchored reference genome sequence is extremely valuable. While the list of crops with available reference genome sequences is pushing over 50, sweetpotato and yam are not listed among them (as of Oct. 2015). However, sequencing efforts for sweetpotato and both main species of Dioscorea food yams in Asia, the USA, and Europe are delivering quality assemblies, and high-density sequencing-based genotyping has started for these species. This is an exciting time for genomic tools for sweetpotato and yam, and the workshop should deliver a series of interesting and informative talks that bring many more scientists up to date on recent developments for these important root and tuber crops.