Establishing In Planta Haploid Inducer Line By Edited Simtl In Foxtail Millet (Setaria Italica)

Foxtail millet (Setaria italica), a member of the Poaceae grass family, is a C4 plant that is grown in arid and semi-arid regions as a food and fodder crop in dozens of countries including India and China. It was domesticated from the wild species green foxtail (S. viridis) over 8,000 years ago and is closely related to several major food, feed and bioenergy grasses including maize, sorghum, sugarcane and switchgrass. Foxtail millet is small in size and its small diploid genome has been sequenced and annotated recently (Bennetzen et al., 2012; Jia et al., 2013), thus increasingly becoming a model for C4 plants.