Exploration of complex genomes of roses (Rosa L. sect. Caninae (DC.) Ser.)

Rosa represents an ecologically and economically important genus with widespreadwidely exploited in ornamental horticulture polyploidy. However, Rosa is also enigmatic in having a unique reproduction system called 'permanent odd polyploidy'. Only one parental genome is transmitted through male gametes (pollen) while the female gametes (ovule) transmit 4-5 genomes depending on the ploidy level. This raises a number of interesting mechanistic and evolutionary questions that will be a topic of comprehensive investigation. Deep sequencing of Rosa genomes yielding large amount of genomic sequences will be useful for generation of genome and chromosome-specific probes. We expect that such an approach will allow us to obtain information about the major components constituting the chromosome sets which are characterised by their different meiotic behaviour.