Analysis of Natural Variation in 30 Sorghum Landraces

Sorghum is a next generation of crop species for food grain, feedstock, beverage and biofuel production. To discover highly desirable agronomic traits in sorghum, we analyzed 3.42 billion DNA sequences derived from 30 sequenced sorghum landraces using next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology. Using the BWA short reads aligner, 97% of the sequenced reads mapped successfully to the sorghum reference genome. Using the SAMtools variant-calling algorithm, we detected 68.14 million mutations, including 61.32 million DNA base substitutions or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and 6.81 million insertions and deletions (INDELs). In our preliminary analysis using the snpEff variant annotation tool, we predicted a total of 134,207 high-impact mutations and 1.81 million moderate-impact mutations in the 30 sequenced sorghum landraces