The Plant Pathway Elucidation Project

In an effort to develop solutions to the global challenges expected over the next century in the face of declining arable lands, and exponential human population growth, the Plant Pathway Elucidation Project (P2EP) was initiated at the North Carolina Research Campus. Situated in Kannapolis, NC, NCRC is a state of the art research campus started with an endowment from David H. Murdock, CEO of Dole Foods.  With collaboration from nine North Carolina Universities as well as the expertise and financial support of both the public and private sectors, a vision was born allowing a leadership team of visionaries and senior research scientists from industry (Castle & Cooke, General Mills, and Dole Foods), along with principal investigators (NCSU, UNCC) and experts in bioinformatics and genomics (UNCC) from academia to assemble and train a team of PhD, Masters, undergraduate and high school graduates to begin the elucidation of plant pathways. This will contribute to the development of more economical and sustainable agricultural practices, increased yield and nutritional value, improvements to traditional breeding methodologies, and aid in deciphering the  chemical pathways instrumental to greater human health.  With the additional contributions from post-doctoral researchers, and experts in the crop bio-sciences from the USDA, AAFC, CORE, BYU, NDSU, and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign the P2EP team has developed the highest density map of the oat and broccoli genome to date, making use of both GBS and SNP array markers.