Population genomic and genome-wide association studies of agroclimatic traits in sorghum

Accelerating crop improvement in sorghum, a staple food for people in semiarid regions across the developing world, is key to ensuring global food security in the context of climate change. To facilitate gene discovery and molecular breeding in sorghum, we have characterized ~265,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 971 worldwide accessions that have adapted to diverse agroclimatic conditions. Using this genome-wide SNP map, we have characterized population structure with respect to geographic origin and morphological type and identified patterns of ancient crop diffusion to diverse agroclimatic regions across Africa and Asia. To better understand the genomic patterns of diversification in sorghum, we…