The goal of the Malaysian Oil Palm Genome Programme (MyOPGP) is to produce gold standard references of the E. guineensis (EG) and E. oleifera (EO) genomes, which have a genome size of ~1.8 Gb. The sequences of both of these species, EG and EO and the shell gene were recently published in two back-to-back landmark publications in the prestigious journal – Nature (Singh et al., 2013a, b). Transcriptome from more than 30 samples were also sequenced to identify the gene populations in different oil palm tissues. The programme generated large amounts of data that is useful to the scientific and oil palm research community. The genomsawit web portal aims to facilitate access to the genome data and information. In August 2013, the genomsawit web portal was made accessible to the public. Construction of this web portal is very important, as it will help stimulate further innovations in biotechnological research and facilitate application of genomics and marker-based technologies in oil palm breeding and genetics.

Main Researcher: Rozana Rosli