Managing Genotypes, Phenotypes, and Environment Data for the Maize Genomes to Fields Initiative.

Genomes to Fields (G2F) is an umbrella initiative to support translation of maize genomic information for the benefit of growers, consumers and society. This public-private partnership is building on publicly funded corn genome sequencing projects to develop approaches to understand the functions of corn genes and specific alleles across environments. Ultimately this information will be used to enable to accurate prediction of the phenotypes of corn plants in diverse environments. There are many dimensions to the over-arching goal of understanding genotype-by-environment (GxE) interactions, including which genes impact which traits and trait components, how genes interact among themselves (GxG), the relevance of specific genes under different growing conditions, and how these genes influence plant growth during various stages of development. This initiative promotes projects that advance integrated research and technologies, combining fields such as genetics, genomics, plant physiology, agronomy, climatology and crop modeling, with computation and informatics, statistics and engineering. G2F's GxE subgroup - which is comprised mainly of maize breeders - aims to assess environmental effects on an extensive collection of inbreds and hybrids at environmentally diverse locations.  

My lab group at Iowa State is working to identify, develop, and deploy solutions to manage genotype, environment, and phenotype data.  For the GxE subgroup we support current data management needs simultaneous with planning for the deployment of improved information platforms. Current platform components include resources developed by the iPlant Collaborative and the Integrated Breeding Platform's Breeding Management System (BMS). Data types, hard problems, lessons learned, and likely partners for future collaborative development will be presented and discussed.