Yams are clonally propagated crops, cultivated mainly for their starchy tubers. The genus has a pantropical distribution encompassing species with variable ploidy levels. Greater and guinea yams are the two main edible species whilst around ten species have a local importance. Breeding programmes target mainly the improvement of tuber quality, the increasing of tuber yield and biotic resistance. Tremendous efforts have been dedicated to assess the ploidy level and diversity of the cultivated species and their wild relatives using microsatellite markers. In only the last ten years have we seen an increase in yam genomics resources. This has been amplified by the advent of the next generation sequencing. To date, draft genomes were produced for five species, together with eight transcriptomes from different species. However, yams stand behind the major crops. These new resources have not been fully harnessed yet and their use for breeding programmes remains underutilised.