Allele Mining and its Applications

Allele Mining is an approach that is used to dissect naturally occurring allelic variations or suitable alleles of a candidate gene controlling key agronomic traits which has potential in crop improvement. It helps in tracing the evolution of alleles, identification of new haplotypes and development of allele-specific molecular markers for use in marker-assisted selection (MAS). With the recent expansion of sequence data bases, locus to phenotype reverse genetic strategies have become increasing popular alternative to phenotypic screening for functional analysis by taking advantages of robust equipment developed for high-throughput sequencing and genotypic and a popular image analysis programme developed for general public. Allele mining has tremendous applications in the field of agriculture and crop improvement including development of new haplotypes, molecular markers for characterizing genetic diversity and syntenic relationships among crop genotypes and marker assisted selection.