Prunus mume genome research: current status and prospects

Mei (Prunus mume) is an excellent garden tree highly praised in China, possessing both ornamental and cultural values. Breeding Mei with distinctive characteristics and high resistance has become a long-term goal to meet the visual and spiritual demands in the new era. With the rapid development of biotechnology, researchers have successively completed the whole genome sequence and resequencing of Mei, and continue to employ advanced techniques to investigate the formation mechanisms of important ornamental traits and stress resistance traits in Mei. Thus, the groundwork has been established for achieving the breeding objectives. In this article, we provide an overview of the development and expansion of genome projects over the past decade, including whole-genome sequencing, resequencing, and genetic mapping. We further present a concise summary of the research progress made in understanding major ornamental traits and cold resistance traits. These accomplishments hold great promise for significantly enhancing the efficiency of Mei and further realizing breeding goals.