SCIENCE@home

ABSTRACT

Plants are the world's most consumed goods and they possess high economic and health values. In most countries in Africa, the supply and quality of food will rise to meet the growing population's increasing demand. Genomics and other tools of biotechnology offer the opportunity to improve on subsistence crops and medicinal herbs in the continent. Significant advancement has been made in plant genomics which has enhanced our knowledge of the molecular processes in both plant quality and yield. The sequencing of complex genomes of African plant species, facilitated by the continuously evolving Next Generation sequencing technologies and advanced bioinformatics approaches, have provided new opportunities for crop improvement. This review summarizes the achievements of genome sequencing projects of endemic African plants in the last two decades. We also present perspectives and challenges for future plant genomic studies that will accelerate important plant breeding programs for African communities. These challenges include lack of basic facilities, lack of skills for genomics studies design, sequencing, and bioinformatics analysis. However, it is imperative to state that African countries have become key players in the plant genome revolution and genome derived-biotechnology. Therefore, African governments should invest in public plant genomics research and applications, establish bioinformatics platforms and training, and stimulate University and Industry partnership to fully deploy plant genomics, particularly to agriculture and medicine.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2021

  • Venue

    The Plant Journal

  • Publication date

    2021-04-10

  • Fields of study

    Biology, Agricultural and Food Sciences, Medicine, Environmental Science

  • Identifiers
    DOI 10.1111/tpj.15272PMID 33837593
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar, PubMed

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-100 of 115 references · Page 1 of 2

12
Next

CITED BY

Showing 1-18 of 18 citing papers · Page 1 of 1