Genomic resources in horticultural crops: Status, utility and challenges

A significant review of status and availability of genomic resources in horticultural crops can be utilized for the efficient exploitation of the current research in developing improved varieties and also defining future goals. In this review, we describe the current genomic resources available in major horticultural crops and utility of the genomic and genic sequence information for isolating and characterizing novel useful genes and designing new DNA markers. We have found that these genomic resources have been utilized for both basic and applied research; however the progress is relatively slow. Recent advances in automation and high throughput techniques used in decoding plant genomes play an important role to speed up the genomic research. With the establishment of genome and transcriptome sequencing projects for several horticultural crops, huge wealth of sequence information have been generated. These sequence information have been used extensively for analyzing and understanding genome structures and complexities, comparative and functional genomics and to mine useful genes and molecular markers. However, certain limitations present a number of challenges for the generation and utilization of genomic resources in many important crops.