BRIDGE: Biodiversity Informatics to Unlock the Genetic Diversity of Barley Hosted at the Genebank of IPK Gatersleben

Genomics and biodiversity informatics are rising as fundamental tools to harness genetic resources harbored in germplasm collections, an essential albeit mostly untapped reservoirs of genetic diversity for crop research and improvement. The BRIDGE project aims to molecularly characterize more than 20,000 accessions of domesticated (Hordeum vulgare L. subsp. vulgare) and wild (Hordeum vulgare L. subsp. spontaneum) barley hosted at the German ex situ genebank at IPK Gatersleben, by means of a genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) approach. The data is being analyzed in context of the barley genomic framework to study population structure, shed light on the historical flow of pedigree haplotypes during breeding practices and mine allelic variation at breeding-relevant traits. The outcoming genome diversity catalog will also enable a more informed classification of genebank accessions based on non-redundant molecular passports. Moreover, a novel warehouse infrastructure will provide a systematic valorization of the upcoming genomics data and a link to the passport and phenotypic data accumulated by the IPK genebank conservation management. Here we present the first insights on BRIDGE data analysis, based on more than 10,000 already analyzed barley accessions.