Miscanthus genus belongs to the family Poaceae and Andropogoneae tribe, which also includes maize, sorghum or sugar cane. Miscanthus  sensu lato contains about twenty species but it includes only about ten in sensu stricto (Hodkinson et al., 2015). The giant miscanthus grown in France corresponds to Miscanthus x giganteus, a triploid interspecific hybrid: it comes from a spontaneous natural cross occurred in Japan between a tetraploid M. sacchariflorus and a diploid M. sinensis.

Miscanthus has a basic chromosomal number of 19 chromosomes, which is almost twice that of sorghum comprising 10 chromosomes. By a comparative analysis of the sequenced genomes of M. sinensis and sorghum, Mitros et al. (2020) showed that each sorghum chromosome aligns with a pair of M. sinensis chromosomes, except for one miscanthus chromosome that corresponds to the fusion of two chromosomes of sorghum.

Miscanthus is valued for its high biomass production with low chemical inputs ( https://mots-agronomie.inrae.fr/index.php/Miscanthus_:_une_culture_nouvelle_en_France ). As a perennial crop, it can be cultivated for several years, up to 20-25 years for the giant miscanthus. The varietal offer currently remains limited to a single clone in France, despite a continued increase in cropping areas with various uses and ecosystem services, which is risky at the slightest climatic or disease event. Thus, INRAe began to develop in the 2010’s genetic studies on Miscanthus sinensis, a species of interest that can contribute to expand the variety supply of miscanthus.

Partners

Laboratory	Address	Persons	Links
	UMRt BioEcoAgro 2, Chaussée Brunehaut Estrées-Mons CS 50136 80203 Péronne cedex FRANCE	Maryse Brancourt-Hulmel, Kristelle Lourgant	https://www.bioecoagro.eu/

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Data

URGI resources

FAIDARE: https://urgi.versailles.inrae.fr/faidare/search?query=miscanthus&page=1&descendants=false

Cited references

Hodkinson, T.R., Klaas, M., Jones, M.B., Prickett, R., Barth, S., 2015. Miscanthus: A case study for the utilization of natural genetic variation. Plant Genet. Resour. Characterisation Util. 13, 219–237. https://doi.org/10.1017/S147926211400094X 

Mitros, T., Session, A.M., James, B.T., Wu, G.A., Belaffif, M.B., Clark, L.V., Shu, S., Dong, H., Barling, A., Holmes, J.R., Mattick, J.E., Bredeson, J.V., Liu, S., Farrar, K., G\lowacka, K., Je\.zowski, S., Barry, K., Chae, W.B., Juvik, J.A., Gifford, J., Oladeinde, A., Yamada, T., Grimwood, J., Putnam, N.H., Vega, J.D., Barth, S., Klaas, M., Hodkinson, T., Li, L., Jin, X., Peng, J., Yu, C.Y., Heo, K., Yoo, J.H., Ghimire, B.K., Donnison, I.S., Schmutz, J., Hudson, M.E., Sacks, E.J., Moose, S.P., Swaminathan, K., Rokhsar, D.S., 2020. Genome biology of the paleotetraploid perennial biomass crop Miscanthus. Nat. Commun. 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18923-6