"A shea tree can take 25 years or more to come into production so it can be very costly for a farmer to wait that long and wonder if a tree is worth keeping," said Iago Hale, associate professor of specialty crop improvement. "With such a long growing period, traditional breeding strategies simply aren't viable, which is one reason there aren't any high-performing shea varieties. The shea genome will enable researchers to gauge the potential of a seedling as soon as it germinates and through genome-enabled tree selection, we can start moving the needle on this difficult species."In their study, published online in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science, researchers assembled a chromosome-scale reference genome for the shea tree. Like the human genome, the shea tree genome contains genes that determine traits helping researchers to determine tree characteristics. Genome annotation by the researchers led to the identification of 38,505 coding genes. Further comparative sequencing ...

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