Primary Investigator

Email

Institution

Parks, Bradley O.

bparks@colorado.edu

University of Colorado Boulder

Abstract
This award will support a planning effort for submission of a full proposal. Government partners include primarily the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (National Geophysical Data Center), the US Department of Agriculture (Agricultural Research Service, and several other agencies in supportive roles.

There is immediate need to prioritize the target government germplasm (seeds and rootstocks) acquisitions for crop improvement and to estimate distribution of germplasm diversity in landscapes. These problems are complex and interdependent ones since the distribution of germplasm diversity must be inferred (modeled) from eco-geographical indicators such as temperature, precipitation, and soil type, accommodating anecdotal information about native distributions, without knowing how the relationships among these elements are controlled. The objectives of the proposed work are to predict, based on ecological factors; when current germplasm collections are inadequate, how they should be augmented with new material, and where additional germplasm should be collected. The scope of these problems is global since the gene pool from which germplasm may be sampled is not restricted to nations or continents.

An innovative approach is proposed to infer germplasm diversity from the extensive and expanding national resource of digital environmental data by applying multiple-criteria geospatial stratification techniques and geographic information system (GIS) technology to predict germplasm distributions in relation to environmental factors. This approach will automate previously non-comparable, unsystematic, and subjective procedures to create digital government gene banks that are capable of becoming self-monitoring, more adaptable to changing conditions, and much more efficient.