Impact story embracing innovation through technology | Earlham Institute

"A determined commitment to open science, open access and open data allows us to have a significant impact.

Through building on research and adding our research expertise we have been able to extend and enhance already cutting-edge software, to produce the most accurate and complete wheat genome assembly to date. Now available to all researchers, this will allow accelerated crop improvement of one of the world’s most important staples.

Another important tool is the Brassica Information Portal (BIP). This online resource is of importance to scientists, breeders and industry, as a reference database linking phenotypic traits to specific cultivars of all Brassica species. As one of the most globally important genera of crops for improved nutrition, with India and China being the biggest producers of vegetables such as cauliflower, more efficient breeding of Brassicas using BIP will have positive effects worldwide.

Other tools developed on-site allow for easier identification of introns within genome sequences and better comparison of genomic datasets. Our help with the community-driven development of the Oxford Nanopore MinION, including development of the alignment and analysis tool NanoOK, is ushering in the next wave of NGS technology.

Finally, our participation in international collaborations including CyVerse, Collaborative Plant Omics and the Wheat Information System, highlights our open-data, open-access and open-source culture."