The CGIAR Generation Challenge Programme (GCP) and iPlant Collaborative recently signed a joint Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
The MoU is geared to provide crop breeders worldwide with greater access to breeding tools and resources. Under the terms of this MoU, iPlant will collaborate with GCP in developing GCP’s Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP).
“One of the biggest constraints to the successful deployment of molecular technologies in public plant breeding, especially in the developing world, is a lack of access to informatics tools to support sample tracking, breeding logistics, data management, analysis and decision support,” observed Dr Graham McLaren, IBP’s Project Manager. “The iPlant cyberinfrastructure will allow us to develop and deploy an Integrated Breeding Workbench which will be configurable to different breeding workflows and provide the informatics support and analytical pipeline required for integrated breeding. In addition, the collaboration will give breeders throughout the world access to the products of upstream biological research necessary for effective molecular breeding.”