Few pests eat away at farm profitability as much as soybean cyst nematode (SCN). Causing at least $1.5 billion in yield losses annually, it's soybean's single biggest threat. Unfortunately, soybean's most effective tool, genetic resistance, is starting to fail. That's why a multi-institution research team led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has developed the first pangenome for SCN.
"The SCN pangenome allows us to do population genetic analysis of nematodes to understand how they're overcoming resistance," said Matt Hudson, professor in the Department of Crop Sciences, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at Illinois and senior author of the study published in BMC Genomics.
Hudson added that the pangenome could also help develop technology to easily test which soybean resistance type to plant in a given area, and may one day help design new tools to eliminate the most virulent SCN types before they cause damage.
But first, exactly what is a pangenome?
"It's a modern approach scientists use to catalog the genetic diversity of a species. For decades, the standard practice was to choose a single individual and treat it as the reference. Imagine choosing a single person to represent all of the genetic diversity of the human species; that'd be impossible," said Lucas Borges dos Santos, doctoral student in the Informatics Program at Illinois.
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