Gossypium robinsonii Assembly

The floral diversity in Australia is overwhelmingly unexplored at the gene level. Our native plants are a valuable source of genetic diversity, especially when they are closely related to the key commercial crops that sustain humanity. It is imperative to understand the genetics of these wild crop relatives for practical reasons because of their potential to build crop resilience to radical shifts in our climate, with some unique gene sequences likely to be enriched in the wild cotton. Equally intriguing are the evolutionary relationships between genomes, with Australian wild cotton having been remote from New World Gossypium species for tens of millions of years. The unknown genome of G. robinsonii will help us address the connection between the New World upland allotetraploid cotton with other species of the pantropical genus Gossypium. Although we assume that all cotton species might have a high similarity in terms of their genomic sequences, the Australian species might also be highly divergent because of their Gondwanan origins. In practical terms, studying the G. robinsonii genome will help us identify functional genes that have contributed to the survival of this species in some of the least hospitable environments on Earth. These novel genes could one day be used to identify the traits of modern cotton crops that we know to be associated with improved efficiency of water use without incurring an unacceptable yield penalty.