Speaking at the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute’s sixth annual User Meeting, held in Walnut Creek, Calif., in March, Buckler said that while they may not have realized it at the time, maize breeders in Thailand, Mexico, and elsewhere have, since the turn of the 20th century, captured a great deal more genomic diversity with their land practices than those in the US have. Outside of the US, “there’s lot of very good, useful variation sitting in these diverse, improved lines that we can really start to harness and use in breeding,” Buckler said.
Read more in the May 2011 issue of Genome Technology. Watch the video of Ed Buckler’s talk on the DOE JGI’s YouTube channel.