Recent pea genomic resources will enhance complementary improvement strategies in this crop

The recent development of high-throughput sequencing and genotyping technologies has permitted pea genomics to catch up and enter into the genomic era. We will present the development of functional and structural genomic resources in pea and their application in pea breeding. We developed a pea Unigene expression atlas that allows visualization of expression profiles for any gene of interest in various tissues subjected to different conditions. This was the basis for generating a high density microarray for functional genomics and a high-throughput genotyping BeadChip array for genotyping. These tools will be extremely useful in three breeding strategies followed by the team: (i) ideotype breeding, which pursue an ideal plant model that is expected to meet the desired yield and quality requirements of producers and users; (ii) targeted breeding, which chase the good combinations of genetic factors controlling traits of interest; and (iii) genome-wide breeding, which models phenotypes from high density marker genotypes