Project Number: 1907-21000-029-04
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Sep 15, 2008
End Date: Sep 14, 2013

Objective:
The proposed work is a joint effort to develop genomic and bioinformatic approaches to dissect maize, grape and other crops' agronomic traits. The goal is to identify specific genes and alleles that could be used in crop improvement. 1. Develop and molecularly characterize germplasm that capture high levels of genetic diversity. 2. Characterize germplasm for a wide range of agronomic and developmental traits. 3. Develop statistical analysis approaches for relating genotype and phenotype. Deploy these analysis approaches in easy to use software for the entire community.

Approach:
1. Inbred lines and testcross germplasm will be created that will be efficient for trait dissection. The USDA maize and grape germplasm will be genotyped with high throughput next generation sequencing technologies. 2. Germplasm will be evaluated in replicated field trials for agronomic and developmental traits in both temperate and tropical environments. 3. Statistical approaches will be developed to deal with complex haplotypes, rare alleles, quantitative trait model building approaches, and breeding prediction. The software will be deployed in open source statistical scripts and in the TASSEL software package.