An Italian functional genomic resource forMedicago truncatula

Background:Medicago truncatulais a model species for legumes. Its functional genomics have been considerably boosted in recent years due to initiatives based both in Europe and US. Collections of mutants are becoming increasingly available and this will help unravel the genetic control of important traits for many species of legumes.Findings: Our report is on the production of three complementary mutant collections of the model speciesMedicago truncatulaproduced in Italy in the frame of a national genomic initiative. Well established strategies were used:Tnt1mutagenesis, TILLING and activation tagging. Both forward and reverse genetics screenings proved the efficiency of the mutagenesis approaches adopted, enabling the isolation of interesting mutants which are in course of characterization. We anticipate that the reported collections will be complementary to the recently established functional genomics tools developed forMedicago truncatulaboth in Europe and in the United States.