earticle

영어

The genus Salix (willow) contains 257 species in China, of which two-thirds are shrubs and the rest are trees. Shrub willows have been extensively planted as an excellently sustainable feedstock crop for bioenergy or ideal biomaterial for phytoremediation, and tree willows mainly serve for landscape planting and as an important wood source for such industries as pulp and paper, charcoal, and furniture production in China. As members of the Salicaceae family along with poplars, willows are dioecious catkin-bearing woody plants that propagate easily, grow fast, and have a modest-sized genome. Albeit having the same haploid chromosome number (n = 19) as poplars, willows are more diverse, and their ploidy status can range from diploid to dodecaploid. Furthermore, some shrub willows are able to flower from cuttings in the year immediately after transplantation, suggesting that willows are resilient and could potentially be used as a novel model plant for genetic and genomic research. More recently, the whole genome sequencing of S. suchowensis has been reported and that of S. purpurea released in Phytozome. Despite their comprehensive importance, the genetic and genomic resources available for willow are still insufficient, although some effort has been made. In this presentation, we would like to illustrate the progress of willow research in Jiangsu Academy of Forestry from 1960s, which containing four main parts including collection, conservation, evaluation, and utilization of willow resources.