The Federated Plant Database Initiative for the Legumes

The "Legume Federation" (http://legumefederation.org) is an NSF project to foster data standards, distributed development, and comparative analysis, via gene families and shared phenotypes, to support research across the legume family – and to support robust agriculture for a world that is significantly legume-fed. Participating Genomic Data Portals (GDPs) currently include, but are not limited to MedicagoGenome (http://medicagogenome.org), SoyBase (http://soybase.org), PeanutBase (http://peanutbase.org), the Legume Information System (http://legumeinfo.org), Climate Resilient Chickpea Lab (http://chickpealab.ucdavis.edu), Alfalfa Genomics Network (http://www.alfalfa-genome.org), Medicago Hapmap project (http://www.medicagohapmap.org), KnowPulse (http://knowpulse.usask.ca), and the Cool Season Food Legume Database (http://www.coolseasonfoodlegume.org). The goals of the Legume Federation include 1) sharing knowledge, development, and data sets across all legume crops; 2) defining standards for data formats, metadata standards, Web service protocols, and ontology use; 3) establishing an open repository for data exchange; and 4) encouraging the use of common, open-source model organism database tools. Clear standards and formats, with templates and tools for data collection and submission, will enable broader participation. Although a major focus of the project is on methods for distributed development, we emphasize that the fundamental mission is to enable improved agricultural productivity for this important group of crop plants by integrating genetic, genomic, and phenotypic data across species to enable identification of common molecular bases for important traits.