3K Grapevine Resequencing Project starts an new era of grapevine study

On the basis of 472 re-seq project, our team jointly launched the 3K Grapevine Resequencing Project with grape researchers all over the world, aiming to carry out > 20x whole genome sequencing of 3,000 grape accessions within two years. This work will capture information on phenotypes and genetic diversity of grape species worldwide. At present, a large number of cultivars, wild species and their outgroups have been sequenced, and some wild grapes have been de novo assembled. These unprecedented data sets will help us solve some genetic problems such as domestication, variety formation, morphological and physiological characteristics. More broadly, this work will enhance our understanding of plant evolution and domestication.

Looking forward to the division and cooperation of the entire 3K project, in terms of sample collection, the goal is to collect samples of grape accessions all over the world, including cultivated grapes, European wild grapes, North American and East Asian wild species, as well as some outgroups that can be used to detect more alleles. These wild materials will help to interpret the population history of grape domestication process and to reveal the natural selection of grapes as they migrate with human. Some common cultivars will be used for genetic studies of vine morphology, physiology and disease resistance, etc. In terms of bioinformatics and data sharing, raw data (FASTQ, BAM, and VCF) will be available through the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) and the VitisGDB database (http://vitisgdb.ynau.edu.cn/), as well as the latest progress, including the collected sample size, species, geographical distribution and other related data. The aim of the 3K Grapevine Resequencing Project is to establish a resource platform comparable to the 3K Rice Genome Project, integrating valuable data from all research teams, and welcome cooperation in an open form.

The completion of the 3K Grapevine Resequencing Project will help accelerate the breeding of new varieties in China, thereby enhancing the scientific influence of China's fruit industry.