Research from the United States government suggests that rapidly growing trees like poplars and willows are candidate "biofuel crops" from which it is expected that cellulosic ethanol and higher energy content fuels can be efficiently extracted.

However, domesticating these as crops will require a deep understanding of the physiology and genetics of trees, which has led scientists to turn to long-domesticated fruit trees for hints. The relationship between a peach and a poplar may not be obvious at first glance, but to botanists both trees are part of the rosid superfamily, which includes not only fruit crops like apples, strawberries, cherries, and almonds, but many other plants as well, including rose that gives the superfamily its name.

"The close relationship between peach and poplar trees is evident from their DNA sequence," said Jeremy Schmutz, head of the Plant Program at the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI).

Reporting in the March edition of Nature Genetics, Schmutz and several colleagues working as part of the International Peach Genome Initiative (IPGI) reported their success mapping the genome of the peach tree (Prunus persica).

"Using comparative genomics approaches, characterization of the peach sequence can be exploited not only for the improvement and sustainability of peach and other important tree species, but also to enhance our understanding of the basic biology of trees," the team wrote. They compared 141 peach gene families to those of six other fully sequenced diverse plant species to unravel unique metabolic pathways, for instance, those that lead to lignin biosynthesis—the molecular "glue" that holds the plant cells together—and a key barrier to deconstructing biomass into fuels.

For bioenergy researchers, the size of the peach genome makes it ideal to serve as a plant model for studying genes found in related genomes, such as poplar, and eventually developing methods for improving plant biomass yield for biofuels.

"One gene we're interested in is the so-called "evergreen" locus in peaches, which extends the growing season," said Denome Institute spokesperson Daniel Rokhsar, under whose leadership sequencing of the peach genome began back in 2007. "In theory, it could be manipulated in poplar to increase the accumulation of biomass."