Recently highlighted in the "SeedWorld" publication, PanAnd is a project funded by the National Science Foundation and it comprises a team of plant scientists who seek to identify the genes in the wild grasses from the Andropogoneae tribe that contribute to drought and heat tolerance. In addition to the Buckler lab, the team includes researchers from the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, University of California-Davis, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and Iowa State University.
For their part of the PanAnd project, the Buckler Lab is currently sequencing the genomes of more than 700 wild grass species with the goal of identifying "bad" mutations so that breeding efforts can select against them, while highlighting adaptive genes that contribute to drought and heat tolerance. The hope is that these adaptive genes already exist within the genome of cultivated corn and sorghum so genes would not need to be introduced, but rather, breeding programs could focus on when and where these genes are expressed.
You can read the "SeedWorld" article here.
A recent feature in the newspaper "SeedWorld" highlighted PanAnd, a National Science Foundation-funded research. doodle jump