Twenty Thousand Accessions Under Analysis: From Cold Room to GWAS

Genebank genomics holds the promise of transforming genebanks from storage facilities for valuable plant genetic resources into digital information centers for crop diversity. This transition will take advantage of high-throughput sequencing and novel workflows for analyzing and sharing data. We are currently conducting a proof-of-principle study to obtain genome-wide genotypic data for the entire barley collection hosted at the German Federal ex situ genebank at IPK Gatersleben. I will present our workflow for the streamlined generation of genotyping-by-sequence data (GBS) and its bioinformatic analysis in context of the barley reference genome. Initial explorative population genetic analysis revealed a strong differentiation between Western and Far Eastern barleys, but also highlighted previous efforts at a targeted utilization of this diversity in breeding. I will provide examples for how genebank conservation management can benefit from this comprehensive valuable molecular passport information that can pinpoint inconsistencies between genetic data between historic records on the provenance of material, duplicates in the collection and inadvertent crosses between unrelated accessions during propagation. Lastly, I will report on the prospect of using GBS data for association genetics of traits governing spike morphology and grain dimensions.