![]() IRIC aims to provide access to well organized information about rice, and to facilitate communication and collaboration for rice community, having germplasm diversity as a focal entry point. ![]() ![]() Phenotyping data have increasingly become the most valuable and expensive part of gene discovery and trait development for crop improvement. It requires a lot of time, labor and expertise to collect phenotyping data. The scope of phenotyping can be very broad and can cover hundreds of different traits. New high-throughput phenotyping technologies can significantly increase the scope, speed and data density of phenotyping. Combination of genotyping and phenotyping data will lead to discoveries of many novel trait-loci associations. Available sequence data will provide an opportunity to predict causative gene variations which, after validation, will be the targets in breeding introgression or genetic engineering experiments. |