Realizing a decade-long dream, an international team of scientists today publicly released the peach genome sequence, the first genome completed for crops in the Rosaceae family. The data that comprises the peach genome is housed at WSU on the U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded Genome Database for Rosaceae (www.rosaceae.org).
Improvement of traits such as enhanced flavor and disease resistance is now a more efficient prospect for peach and other tree fruit. This new resource will enable targeted, DNA-informed breeding, an approach to developing tasty and nutritious fruit that is both more precise and more economically viable than traditional breeding.
Read more at WSU Today Online.