“The sequencing and analysis of the Brachypodium genome is an important advance toward securing sustainable supplies of food, feed and fuel from new generations of grass crops,” said DOE JGI collaborator John Vogel of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service (ARS). “Since Brachypodium has the traits required to serve as a functional model system-small size, short lifecycle, self fertility, simple growth requirements, small genome and can be efficiently transformed or genetically altered-it can be used to more rapidly gain the knowledge about basic grass biology necessary to develop superior grass crops. This is especially important in the context of developing grasses as biofuel crops because the crops themselves (e.g. switchgrass and Miscanthus) are difficult experimental subjects due to their large size, long lifecycle and complex genetics.”
Read more at the UC Newsroom.