Developing a CORE Knowledgebase for Oat Improvement

Recent high-throughput sequencing efforts of a diverse collection of oat germplasm within the Collaborative Oat Research Enterprise (CORE) Project have led to the development of a complete twenty-one chromosome linkage map distribution of molecular markers in hexaploid oat. The resources developed for this project center around twenty tested germplasm lines and a series of array tested mapping populations. An Internet interface is being developed to assist in the CORE-associated database which will house all general project information and an interactive toolbox for molecular and breeding applications. The project will assist to merge CORE genotype and phenotype data and aims to be a valuable resource for potential areas on oat innovation. CORE phenomic data has been categorized into three groups; agronomic, disease, and milling datasets; additional datasets include crown rust disease data, groats from diversity, winter, and spring lines for which beta glucan, total dietary fiber, avenanthramide and tocol analysis data are being collected. Progress toward using these data to provide key insights and innovations leading to new oat varieties and to enhance the existing CORE project will be presented.