Speaking of wheat, I know we Nibbled yesterday the arrival of yet another germplasm database, the Seeds of Discovery (SeeD) Wheat Catalog (there’s also a maize one), but I couldn’t resist another bite at that cherry. If only because some of the material is on its way to Svalbard right now. The Seeds of Discovery catalogues are still works in progress, but already really important achievements:
At this point, the database contains an exemplary dataset of genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) profiles of selected landraces, synthetic bread wheats and modern cultivars; the passport data of Mexican landraces; and the Principal Coordinates (PCO) describing the genetic structure of a broad set of more than 10,000 Mexican and Iranian landraces, modern varieties and synthetic bread wheats.
My plea for the developers, as they work on the portal further, is that they do not lose sight of the fact that what they’re dealing with here is accessions in a genebank. I can see no way for a peruser of the Catalogue, intrigued by the genotype of an accession, to actually ask for seed. You know, like the stuff that’s going up to Svalbard. What you’d currently have to do is cut the accession number and paste it into the genebank’s documentation system or Genesys. I’ve done it, and it works, but it’s not particularly elegant. Or am I missing something? Maybe Seeds of Discovery and the CIMMYT genebank, who I know work very closely together, could expand a little on how they see their two databases linking up in the future.