Project Number: 5348-21000-022-02
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Aug 01, 2007
End Date: Dec 31, 2008

Objective:
The objective of this cooperative research project is to carry out a system-wide effort to improve location data for all accessions in the USDA, ARS National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) that have been collected at a specific geographic location. The project entails reviewing the Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN) database to identify germplasm that has a legitimate geographic provenance. Existing latitude and longitude values will be validated. Accessions having only narrative locality data will have latitude and longitude values estimated. This work will be done in conjunction with a project to improve location data for accessions held in the CGIAR genebanks.

Approach:
A database containing CGIAR and NPGS data will developed. All collection locality data held by NPGS and CGIAR genebanks will be comprehensively corrected and completed. The approach will follow the procedures outline in the Guide to Best Practices for Georeferencing (downloadable from www.gbif.org), recently published by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Procedures will use the latest GIS tools, concepts and digital gazetteers developed by the Biogeomancer project (www.biogeomancer.org). To begin with, existing coordinates of localities that have geographic coordinates will be verified by cross-checking against gazetteers and elevation data. Localities without coordinates will be georeferenced (i.e. estimation of latitude, longitude from locality text data). Estimates of latitude and longitude will also include an estimation of uncertainty. Additional annotation describing accession specific efforts will also be added to the database. Upon completion of upgrade, enhanced data will be returned to the NPGS where it will be used to upgrade the GRIN database. Documents SCA with International Rice Research Institute. Formerly 5348-21000-018-01S (8/7/08)