By Marcia Wood

Every year, wheat and barley breeders mail snippets of plant leaves to an
Agricultural Research Service (ARS) laboratory in Fargo, N.D.
Molecular geneticist Shiaoman Chao is ready for the deluge of young,
carefully preserved leaves that show up in her mail at the agency's Cereal
Crops Research Unit in Fargo. She uses them in determining the genetic
identity - or genotype - of wheat plants. The information she gleans from
her analyses is invaluable to plant breeders because it can help them
determine whether the progeny of their plant breeding programs have what it
takes to succeed in America?s vast fields of grain.

Chao sends the results not only to the breeders, but also to a new database
that she is designing and building. It houses the findings generated at her
lab as well as from other research locations.

With breeders? cooperation, Chao plans to eventually make the database
public. She?s working toward that goal with ARS scientists in the Genomics
and Gene Discovery Research Unit, part of the agency?s Western Regional
Research Center at Albany, California. The California team, led by
geneticist Olin D. Anderson, curates the massive GrainGenes database.

Plans call for Chao?s database to become accessible through GrainGenes.
Breeders looking for wheat or barley plants with prized traits could search
for those plants and traits on Chao?s database via GrainGenes.

GrainGenes is an apt choice of Web venue. In the United States and abroad,
plant breeders and others already know that this site is a treasure trove of
genetic information about wheat, barley and other ?small grains? like rye,
oats and triticale. Making the genotype results accessible there means they?ll
be widely available as quickly as possible, according to Chao.
www.checkbiotech.org