Meiosis in cereal crops: the grasses are back

A major goal of breeding programs is to increase and manipulate the genetic diversity of crops. The incorporation of beneficial genes from wild relatives into crops is achieved by producing hybrid plants in which meiotic recombination events occur between the two genomes. Furthering our understanding of meiosis in the cereals could enable the manipulation of homolog pairing and recombination, significantly enhancing the efficiency of breeding programs. The main obstacle to the genetic analysis of meiosis in cereal crops has been the complex organization of most cereal genomes, many of which are polyploid. However, the recent sequencing of the rice genome, the use of insertional mutagenesis and reverse genetics approaches has opened the door for the genetic and genomic analysis of cereal meiosis. The goal of this review is to show how these new resources, as well as the use of three-dimensional microscopy, are rapidly providing insights into the mechanisms that control pairing, recombination and segregation of homologous chromosomes during meiosis in four major cereal crops: wheat, rice, maize and rye.