H279 SEQUON - Sequencing van het uiengenoom (BO-50-002-034, BO-26.03-003-001)

To meet the need to produce food for an increasing world population, production levels of food must increase while using less land and inputs such as water, nutrients and pesticides, novel strategies are needed. For the Netherlands, onion has a high economic value as 90% of the onion bulbs produced in the Netherlands are exported. Dutch breeding companies not only breed onions for the Netherlands and the rest of Europe, but also for the United States, South America, Asia and Australia. In terms of global production value, onion ranks second after tomato. In terms of genetics and genomics, knowledge on the onion genome is scarce compared to tomato. The tomato genome is fully sequenced, whereas little is known about the onion genome. This is partly due to the huge size of the onion genome, which is about 18 times larger than the tomato genome. This project aims to develop the genome sequence of onion. The research question, central within this project, is: what is the structure of the onion genome, and how can we use the knowledge of this structure to our strategic advantage within onion breeding programs. Progress of the project will be communicated via a website (www.oniongenome.net).