Location: Corn Insects and Crop Genetics Research
2018 Annual Report
Accomplishments
1. MaizeGDB has improved tools and resources to support multiple maize genomes and to provide better access to data. In addition to the maize reference genome (B73), a long-established maize inbred line that was used as a founder of many public and private breeding programs, several additional reference-quality genomes are now available to the research community. ARS researchers and Iowa State University personnel from Ames, Iowa have continued to provide tools and resources to support these genome assemblies including ways to visually explore the genomes, search based on sequence similarity, visualize variation across lines, view pedigree information, integrate phenotype images, collect assembly and annotation errors, explore curated genomic and genetic data, and download standardized data. Recent focus on data curation has been to identify and curate key datasets for benchmarking genomic discovery tools for the functional annotation of maize genomes, for agronomic trait analyses, for breeding, and for improving database interoperability. The MaizeGDB resource provides long-term storage, support, and stability to the maize research community’s data and provides informatics services for access, integration, and knowledge discovery.
