Citrus is a large genus that includes several major cultivated species, including C. sinensis (sweet orange), Citrus reticulata (tangerine and mandarin), Citrus limon (lemon), Citrus grandis (pummelo) and Citrus paradisi (grapefruit). In 2009, the global citrus acreage was 9 million hectares and citrus production was 122.3 million tons (FAO statistics, see URLs), which is the top ranked among all the fruit crops. Among the 10.9 million tons (valued at $9.3 billion) of citrus products traded in 2009, sweet orange accounted for approximately 60% of citrus production for both fresh fruit and processed juice consumption (FAO statistics, see URLs). Moreover, citrus fruits and juice are the prime human source of vitamin C, an important component of human nutrition.Citrus fruits also have some unique botanical features, such as nucellar embryony (nucellus cells can develop into apomictic embryos that are genetically identical to mother plant). Consequently, somatic embryos grow much more vigorously than the zygotic embryos in seeds such that seedlings are essentially clones of the maternal parent. Such citrus-unique characteristics have hindered the study of citrus genetics and breeding improvement 1,2 . Complete genome sequences would provide valuable genetic resources for improving citrus crops.Citrus is believed to be native to southeast Asia 3-5 , and cultivation of fruit crops occurred at least 4,000 years ago 3,6 . The genetic origin of the sweet orange is not clear, although there are some speculations that sweet orange might be derived from interspecific hybridization of some primitive citrus species 7,8 . Citrus is also in the order Sapindales, a sister order to the Brassicales in the Malvidae, making it valuable for comparative genomics studies with the model plant Arabidopsis.We aimed to sequence the genome of Valencia sweet orange (C. sinensis cv. Valencia), one of the most important sweet orange varieties cultivated worldwide and grown primarily for orange juice production. Normal sweet oranges are diploids, with nine pairs of chromosomes and an estimated genome size of ~367 Mb 9 . To reduce the complexity of the sequenced genome, we obtained a doublehaploid (dihaploid) line derived from the anther culture of Valencia sweet orange 10 . We first generated whole-genome shotgun pairedend-tag sequence reads from the dihaploid genomic DNA and built a de novo assembly as the citrus reference genome; we then produced shotgun sequencing reads from the parental diploid DNA and mapped the sequences to the haploid reference genome to obtain the complete genome information for Valencia sweet orange. In addition, we conducted comprehensive transcriptome sequencing analyses for four representative tissues using shotgun RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) to capture all transcribed sequences and paired-end-tag RNA sequencing (RNA-PET) to demarcate the 5′ and 3′ ends of all transcripts. On the basis of the DNA and RNA sequencing data, we characterized the orange genome for its gene content, heterozygosity and evolutionary features. ...

BACKGROUND: As a potential source of biomass, Jerusalem artichoke has been studied for bioethanol production; however, thus far it has not been investigated for the production of other liquid biofuels, such as biodiesel. This work aims to develop a novel approach for biodiesel production from Jerusalem artichoke tuber using heterotrophic microalgae.

The alga Chlorella protothecoides is known to produce oil suitable for biodiesel preparation by heterotrophic cultivation in media containing glucose as a carbon source. In this study, sugar cane juice was used as alternative carbon supply for oil production. As a result, the highest oil content of 53.0% by cell dry weight was achieved. Fermentation in a 5 L bioreactor showed that algae using sugar cane juice hydrolysate (SCH) grow faster than that using glucose. Conversion ratios of sugar/biomass and sugar/oil using SCH were 15.2 and 8.8% higher than that using glucose, respectively. Biodiesel prepared from algal oil by transesterification is mainly composed of 9-octadecenoic acid methyl ester, 9,12-octadecadienoic acid methyl ester, and hexadecenoic acid methyl ester. Our results suggest that sugar cane is a good feedstock for biodiesel production. Response surface methodology upon exploring the effect of C/N and concentration of yeast extraction (YE) on the yield of biomass and oil was performed. The optimal production with the highest output-cost coefficient of 0.061 ± 0.004 was achieved when C/N was 26.9 and YE was 0.60 g L−1.

Grain size and weight are crucial components of barley yield and quality and are the target characteristics of domestication and modern breeding. Despite this, little is known about the genetic and molecular mechanisms of grain size and weight in barley. Here, we evaluated nine traits determining grain size and weight, including thousand grain weight (Tgw), grain length (Gl), grain width (Gw), grain length-width ratio (Lwr), grain area (Ga), grain perimeter (Gp), grain diameter (Gd), grain roundness (Gr), and factor form density (Ffd), in a double haploid (DH) population for three consecutive years. Using five mapping methods, we successfully identified 60 reliable QTLs and 27 hotspot regions that distributed on all chromosomes except 6H which controls the nine traits of grain size and weight. Moreover, we also identified 164 barley orthologs of 112 grain size/weight genes from rice, maize, wheat and 38 barley genes that affect grain yield. A total of 45 barley genes or orthologs were identified as potential candidate genes for barley grain size and weight, including 12, 20, 9, and 4 genes or orthologs for barley, rice, maize, and wheat, respectively. Importantly, 20 of them were located in the 14 QTL hotspot regions on chromosome 1H, 2H, 3H, 5H, and 7H, which controls barley grain size and weight. These results indicated that grain size/weight genes of other cereal species might have the same or similar functions in barley. Our findings provide new insights into the understanding of the genetic basis of grain size and weight in barley, and new information to facilitate high-yield breeding in barley. The function of these potential candidate genes identified in this study are worth exploring and studying in detail.

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