Wageningen, The Netherlands
March 11, 2014

On February 24 and 25, the Plant Genomics Congress Asia was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Focus of this event was Next Generation Sequencing. KeyGene was present with a workshop and presentation in the main program. Our workshop, entitled Translating Next Generation Sequencing into value for breeding, was received very well by the attendees. Content of the workshop was :

1. Keygene’s Next Generation Portfolio (Herco van Liere, KeyGene)
2. Next generation markers in breeding for traits in Oil palm (Sharifah Shahrul Syed Alwee, FELDA)
3. Genomic Knowledge Generation, management and use in variety development (Anker Sørensen, KeyGene)
4. Use of whole genome tagging to identify sugar cane rich regions (Olivier Garsmeur, CIRAD)
5. Next generation phenotyping used for trait validation and early field prediction (Shital Dixit, KeyGene)

The 250 participants of the congress came from various countries in South East Asia, with the biggest delegation from Malaysia. It is not that surprising that the oil palm industry sets the pace in Malaysia in applying NGS technologies to unravel the genes responsible from economic traits in oil palm. Various presenters dived into interesting molecular mechanisms in various crops including the latest sequences.

Mrs. Sharifah Shahrul Syed Alwee from the oil palm company Felda took it a step further. She presented an excellent case how, based on the availability of contrasting phenotypes, molecular markers could be developed through NGS in 6 months time. A diagnostic assay has been implemented at Felda to select only for the right crossing material, saving significant costs for otherwise maintaining unnecessary crossing material.

By realizing that oil palm breeding takes much much longer than crops like rice and corn, the bigger challenges lie in shortening the breeding cycle, predictive tissue culturing and choosing the right genes for trait development. In our workshop we presented new ways to tackle these challenges.
 

Website: http://www.keygene.com

Published: March 11, 2014