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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Ithaca, New York » Robert W. Holley Center for Agriculture & Health » Plant, Soil and Nutrition Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #414836
Research Project: Championing Improvement of Sorghum and Other Agriculturally Important Species through Data Stewardship and Functional Dissection of Complex Traits

Location: Plant, Soil and Nutrition Research

Title: SorghumBase: Fostering Community Engagement for Sustainable Sorghum Research

Author
item OLSON, ANDREW - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item CHOUGULE, KAPEEL - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item Gladman, Nicholas
item KUMAR, VIVEK - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item KUMARI, SUNITA - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item LU, ZHENYUAN - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item OLSON, AUDRA - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item TELLO-RUIZ, MARCELA - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item WEI, SHARON - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item Ware, Doreen

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/2/2024
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: SorghumBase plays a key role for the community as we strive to improve sorghum under the mounting pressures of global climate change and population growth. Through a corresponding explosion in the volume and variety of data, the team aims to provide a useful integrated resource that adheres to the FAIR guiding principles for data stewardship. Data that are FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) benefit the community as a whole and contribute to advancing our shared goals. To this end, we engage with sorghum researchers to 1) highlight their published research in blog posts, 2) support curation of their data for submission to appropriate repositories, 3) educate users on features of the platform, and 4) gather feedback to guide ongoing development of SorghumBase. In December of 2023 the team hosted a SorghumBase training workshop in which a group of young scientists delved into all of these topics and more. The participants curated gene models, annotated gene functions described in the literature, learned how to visualize their gene expression data in the genome browser and pathway viewer, performed high-resolution imaging for seed phenotyping, and engaged in helpful discussions on site usability. One request was to provide quicker access to sequence data, and this has been implemented as a new feature on the genes search interface. Another suggestion was to post short videos demonstrating specific features and use cases. We are working on a series of tutorials to complement the online quick guides. We are looking forward to working together to integrate your valuable research data with tools in the platform to better support the sorghum research and breeding community. SorghumBase is funded by USDA ARS 8062-21000-041-00D.