Genome Assembly and Evolutionary Analysis of Brassica Crops

Dear Colleagues,

The Brassicaceae is an important plant family with approximately 3,800 species, including commercially and economically important vegetables, fodder, oilseed and ornamental crops, such as cabbage, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, canola and mustard. Recent advancements in genomics technologies, such as long-read sequencing, chromosome confirmation capture and optical mapping, have enabled the development of highly contiguous genome assemblies. These assemblies have allowed an unprecedented view of the Brassicaceae genome organisation, providing a platform for studying genome evolution, gene expression patterns and trait adaptation. In addition, the foundational resources from the closely related species and model organism, Arabidopsis thaliana, can be exploited to identify and confirm candidate gene function underlying traits of interest, leading to crop improvement.

This Special Issue of Plants will highlight studies focused on recent genome assemblies of Brassica crops and their close relatives, encompassing comparative genomics, pan-genomes, transposable element diversity and evolution, epigenetics, gene function, global gene expression patterns, organelle genome assembly and evolution, evolutionary genomics, and polyploidization. We welcome various article types, including original research, reviews, or commentary articles.

Dr. Sampath Perumal
Dr. Isobel Parkin
Guest Editors

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