Water Lily Genome Project. Nymphaea colorata

Water lily is a common name for all the species categorized into the order Nymphaeales, which composed of three families: Hydatellaceae (just one genus Trithuria of 12 species), Cabombaceae (just two genera, Cabomba, 5 species; Brasenia, 1 species), and Nymphaeaceae (five genera and ~70 species). Many water lily species are highly favored aquatic ornamental plants with cultural and economic importance. The current water lily breeding is restricted to cross breeding, which is slow and costs lots of money and labor, and we know little about gene information from water lilies. Currently no genome from the order Nymphaeales is available. Water lily also occupies a critical evolutionary space that is crucial for understanding the origin and early evolutionary trajectory of flowering plants. Water Lily Genome Project aims to decode genomes and transcriptomes of various water lilies, to shed light on the origin of angiosperms and molecular breeding of water lilies.