Foxtail millet (Setaria italica), one of the oldest crops originating in China, has increasingly been recognized as a promising C4 model plant due to its compact diploid genome, short growth cycle and self‐pollinating nature (Li and Brutnell, 2011). In the past 5 years, significant breakthroughs have been achieved in its basic research and breeding, including high efficient transformation system establishment, telomere‐to‐telomere (T2T) genome assembly, pan‐genome analysis and functional studies (He et al., 2023; Tang et al., 2023; Yang et al., 2020). However, the limited genetic diversity of breeding materials and inefficiencies in identifying target mutants have continued to pose significant challenges in breeding for improved complex agronomic traits and in functional genomics research of this crop.
Plant Biotechnology Journal.2025 May;23(5):1413-1415.IF=10.5