SNP discovery and applications in Brassica napus

This review summarises the biology, discovery and applications of single nucleotide polymorphisms in complex polyploid crop genomes, with a focus on the important oilseed crop $Brassica$ $napus$ . $Brassica$ $napus$ is an allotetraploid species, and along with soybean and oil palm is one of the top three most important oilseed crops globally. Current efforts are well underway to $de$ $novo$ assemble the $B.$ $napus$ genome, following the release of the related $B.$ $rapa$ 'A' genome last year. The next generation of genome sequencing, SNP discovery and analysis pipelines, and the associated challenges for this work in $B.$ $napus$ , will be addressed. The biological applications of SNP technology for both evolutionary and molecular geneticists as well as plant breeders and industry are far-reaching, and will be invaluable to our understanding and advancement of the $Brassica$ crop species.