Project Number: 5366-21000-028-02
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Jun 09, 2005
End Date: Sep 30, 2009

Objective:
The purpose of this project is to characterize small grains germplasm using molecular and other methods to better understand diversity within the National Small Grains Collection. Information generated will help guide future evaluation, maintenance, and acquisition work and will benefit ARS breeding research.

Approach:
An important activity within the National Small Grains Collection is the evaluation of germplasm in the collection. In the past this evaluation was focused on agronomic, quality, and disease resistance traits. Future evaluations will also include molecular characterization of germplasm resources and the research proposed here is part of this theme. Core subsets of various collections have been designated based on geographic origin of accessions. The first step in the proposed research will be to evaluate genetic diversity of the core subsets based on molecular data and to determine their validity and usefulness based on comparisons to other available descriptor data using established statistical techniques. The work will also seek to identify and evaluate new molecular techniques (e.g., bioinformatics, cell and tissue culture) that can be applied to germplasm characterization work. Information generated will be then applied to small grains improvement programs within the Aberdeen Unit. Documents SCA with Alabama A & M. Formerly 5366-21000-024-09S (5/08).