Genetic Database for Wheat and Barley Could Be Made Public

Avatar for Matt Hopkins By Andrea Klosterman Harris|30 September 2008

In addition to sending the results to the breeders, Chao is designing and building a new database that houses the findings generated at her lab and other research locations, which she plans to make public, with breeders’ cooperation. Together with ARS scientists in the Albany, California, US-based Genomics and Gene Discovery Research Unit led by geneticist Olin D. Anderson, Chao’s data will become accessible through the massive GrainGenes database.

In both the US and abroad, plant breeders and others already know that GrainGenes is a treasure trove of genetic information about wheat, barley, and other “small grains” like rye, oats, and triticale. Chao says that making the genotype results accessible there means they’ll be widely available as quickly as possible. No date has been set for public access to Chao’s database.

GrainGenes is located at http://wheat.pw.usda.gov.

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