W492 Deciphering the Oil Palm Genome

Date: Sunday, January 15, 2012
Time: 3:25 PM
Room: Pacific Salon 4-5 (2nd Floor)
Weng Wah Lee , ACGT Sdn Bhd, Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Suan Choo Cheah , ACGT Sdn Bhd, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Kia Ling Chua , Genting Green Tech, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Bih Hua Kwan , ACGT Sdn Bhd, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Oil palm, the highest-yielding oilseed crop in the world, is grown on over 10 million hectares and is a source of approximately one third of the edible oil consumed worldwide. Despite some gains achieved through breeding in the last 6 decades, oil palm yield has not yet reached its genetic potential. To lay the foundation for improvement of both plant species, we have generated whole-genome shotgun sequences of the genome (8x sequence of the 1.9 Mb oil palm genome) using Sanger reads to enable high-quality assemblies. The genome sequences have been supplemented with a high volume of EST and transcriptome sequencing and the genome have been fully annotated. The annotated genomes represent the first comprehensive genomic resources for the species of oil-producing tree.