AsianScientist (Jun 4, 2014) – The open-access, open-data journal GigaScience has published of an article on the genome sequencing of 3000 rice strains along with the release of this entire dataset in a citable format in journal’s affiliated open-access database, GigaDB.
The publication and release of this enormous data set (which quadruples the current amount of publicly available rice sequence data) coincides with World Hunger Day to highlight one of the primary goals of this project: to develop resources that will aid in improving global food security, especially in the poorest areas of the world.
This work is the completion of stage one of the 3000 Rice Genomes Project, a collaborative effort made up of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and BGI, and is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.
With more than 1/8th of the world’s population living in extreme hunger and poverty, and an every-increasing world population (estimated to reach 9.6 billion by 2050), there is a huge need to reduce the impact of agricultural practices on the environment and develop food crops that are of high yield and nutrition. While rice research has greatly advanced since the completion of the first high-quality rice genome sequence in 2005, there has been limited change in breeding practices that are important for producing improved and better adapted rice strains.
“Rice is the staple food for most Asian people, and has increasing consumption in Africa,” said Dr. Li Zhikang, project director at CAAS. “With decreasing resources (water and land), food security is, and will be, the most challenging issue in these countries, both currently and in the future. As a scientist in rice genetics, breeding and genomics, it would be a dream to help to solve this problem.”
“The population boom and worsening climate crisis have presented big challenges on global food shortage and safety. BGI is dedicated to applying genomics technologies to make a fast, controllable and highly efficient molecular breeding model possible. This opens a new way to carry out agricultural breeding. With the joined forces with CAAS, IRRI and Gates Foundation, we have made a step forward in big-data-based crop research and digitalized breeding,” added Dr. Wang Jun, Director of BGI.
To reach their goals, the three-institute collaboration has not only released 13.4 terabytes of data, they have also collected seeds from each strain (available in the International Rice Genebank Collection housed at IRRI). Having banked seeds is essential to make full use of these now genetically defined strains to develop and sustain the most appropriate hybrid strains for different environments.
Publication in GigaScience includes storage of relevant associated data in the journal’s affiliated database, GigaDB, where every dataset is provided with a digital object identifier (DOI), making it possible to cite, find and track data in standard scientific literature, which serves as a strong incentive for researchers to more rapidly release expensive and work-intensive datasets for community use.
The article can be found at: Li et al. (2014) The 3,000 Rice Genomes Project: New Opportunities and Challenges for Future Rice Research.
—–
Source: GigaScience; Photo: David Evan Harris/Flickr/CC.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.
