Neglected or orphan species

New crops that combine desired agronomical properties (e.g., drought tolerance, disease resistance, and a short growing season) with diverse food and industrial applications of their seed have been sought in the past decade. Some crops in this group include many underutilised or orphan crops such as sorghum and various millets, groundnut, cowpea, common bean, chickpea, pigeonpea, cassava, yam, sweet potato and false flax (or camelina). With the advances in genomic technologies, it is likely that the application of association mapping, genome-wide association studies, marker assisted recurrent selection and genomic selection can now play a significant role in improving the situation, and thus the yields of neglected crops. A marginal land growing species such as camelina is drought tolerant, early maturing and requires fewer inputs than other oil seed species, for example. Today, a detailed profile of transcripts for potential targets for seed quality improvement through biotechnology and breeding is available, a first step towards the development of camelina genomics tools.