Special guest seminar
Dr. Murukarthick Jayakodi
Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research 

Advancing faba bean breeding and research with genomics tools

Faba bean (Vicia faba L.) is one of the first domesticated plants at the dawn of agriculture. Its
high yield potential and higher grain protein content hold promises for sustainable regional
protein supply across the world. The giga-size chromosomes (~13 Gb) bloated by repetitive
sequences had hampered its study and crop improvement. Recently, with international
collaborative effort, a high-quality reference genome was released. Recently, we improved
the reference genome using an optical map to identify structural variants at high resolutions.
With a revolutionary new low-cost high accurate long-read sequencing and a high-quality
chromosome-scale physical map in hand, it is now possible to undertake investigations into
the genebank genomics and pan-genome of faba bean. To capture the global genome
diversity, we recently optimized a cost-effective genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) to
characterize the faba bean germplasm collections comprising plant genetic resources in
genebanks and modern elite lines (~ 2000 accessions). We selected a representative set of
genomes to develop chromosome-scale genome assemblies. During my seminar, I will speak
about the current status of faba bean genome research and the prospects of pan-genomics.
Jayakodi et al. (2023) Nature 615: 652