ABSTRACT
A wealth of quantitative trait loci and candidate genes that were, respectively, found linked to or associated with phenotypic traits of interest has accumulated in sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] from myriad genetic mapping projects. Since sorghum’s first quality reference genome was delivered in 2009, many mapping populations have been developed or assembled to successfully identify an estimated 660 marker-trait associations (MTAs) to narrow down genomic regions that individually harbor putative genes, which fluctuates tremendously based on regional linkage disequilibrium and gene density. Only some 8% of studies have validated the causal genes, much less the functional alleles, underlying these regions or candidate genes of interest, despite the resources now available to do so. This chapter focuses on the success stories in sorghum that have identified functional alleles for major effect genes, but also details the opportunities that exist for allele mining in the era of publicly available sorghum pangenomes and genomic database resources.
