Development of WheatIS and Collaboration between Plant Information System

Improving crop germplasm is considered the most promising mechanism for improving crop yield, quality, stability and adaptation to changing environments. Traditional breeding has been assisted by genomic tools through the application of genetic marker assisted selection and genetic modification, and there is a growing potential for genome editing tools to be applied for crop improvement. Each of these approaches requires information on traits, genetics and genomics for successful application, and as the volume of this information grows, there is a requirement to develop tools and systems for the maintenance and interrogation of this information.

The Wheat Information System (www.wheatis.org) was established in 2013, endorsed by the International Wheat Initiative, the main objective is to provide a web-based system to access data resources and analytical tools. At the same time, rice researchers led by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) established the International Rice Informatics Consortium (IRIC; HTTP://iric.irri.org/) to collate similar tools and data for the rice community. Given the similarity of the aims, scope and importance of these projects, the potential to learn from each other and establish approaches which could be applied to other crops, researchers in both projects agreed to review and compare activities, the results of which will be presented.