H2020 AGENT Project: GEnebank Network Activated

AGENT aims to transform genebanks (GBs) from living archives into biodigital resource centers, equipped to meet the needs of a changing world. Fifteen GBs and four genebank genomic hubs will create a network to work in an exemplary manner in barley and wheat to (i) establish a European (global) atlas of crop genomic diversity, (ii) activate currently inaccessible legacy phenotypic data, (iii) implement a novel concept of concerted accumulation of phenological and agronomic data for individual GenRes collections to establish training population datasets for genome-wide prediction of untested GenRes accessions.

Phenotyping will take into account diverse environmental conditions (climate, soil, geography, pathogens) provided by the diverse ecogeographic locations of the participating GBs and their partners. These activities will be supported by a bioinformatics network implementing FAIR principles, standards, protocols, and data formats enabling data storage, access, use, and reuse, extending the existing EURISCO GenRes portal for new data types. AGENT will utilize existing solutions established by ongoing European projects and international initiatives, but will also develop new tools for novel data access, visualization, and use functionality. These will be connected and implemented through plugins or web services, enabling their incorporation into EURISCO and other data portals, and their easy application to other crop GenRes, based on data already available in EURISCO or provided by the AGENT GB partner. A coordinated testing network is another unique layer of AGENT, directly engaging stakeholders (e.g., farmer cooperatives, breeding companies, NGOs) in monitoring, mentoring, capacity building, and training in the development of workflows and tools.

Therefore, the results of the AGENT project will be disseminated directly to GB, researchers, breeders, policymakers, and the general public, raising awareness of the general and specific societal importance of GenRes.