Carthamus tinctorius Genome sequencing

Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) an Asteraceae member, yields high quality edible oil rich in unsaturated fatty acids. Owing to the vast genetic and phenotypic diversity prevailing in the crop, safflower holds tremendous potential for crop improvement through concerted molecular breeding programs. However, genomic resources remain largely underdeveloped in the crop. The major aim of the present study is to develop a large set of novel genomic microsatellite markers from next generation sequencing data for safflower. Illumina paired end technology was used for genome sequencing providing a 3.5X coverage of the genome. The sequence data was further used for studying the microsatellites fraction of safflower genome.