THE James Hutton Institute has been awarded £350,000 of funding to further develop its innovative software to support global food security efforts.
Hutton’s homegrown software platforms, GridScore and Germinate, will support the Crop Trust’s BOLD project (Biodiversity for Opportunities, Livelihoods and Development), which is backed by $58 million from the Norwegian Government. The 10-year project aims to strengthen food and nutrition security worldwide by supporting the conservation and use of crop diversity.
Hutton’s GridScore platform will allow BOLD partners to collect and store phenotype data –the traits and features – of crops. This information will be available to all, and can be used to carry out and track the results of field trials. Germinate will ensure that all experimental data will be made available freely and quickly to the global research community, using web-based interactive tools.
This data will help inform researchers and plant breeders, and help with the development of new more climate resistant crops specific to their geographical location.
There are seven key crops in the BOLD project: alfalfa, barley, finger millet, grass pea, potato, rice and durum wheat. These crops have significant agricultural importance to large parts of the world, and in some instances, have been under served when it comes to their bioinformatics.
Dr Paul Shaw, who leads the BOLD work at the James Hutton Institute said:
“Crop diversity is the biological foundation of agriculture; it’s a treasure trove of useful traits in plants that we can harness to build climate-resilient crops.
“Informatic tools developed here at the James Hutton Institute in Invergowrie are playing an increasingly key role in collecting, storing and sharing experimental data from BOLD and other projects around the world.
“This project will get data from these crops into researchers and breeders’ hands quickly, and in usable, standard formats. We hope this means that the data and underlying germplasm is more efficiently used around the world. We need to be sure that we have enough food to feed people in a changing climate.”
Professor Colin Campbell, Chief Executive of The James Hutton Institute said:
“It’s great to support BOLD in such an important biodiversity project that will not only help Scottish industries in terms of agriculture, but also on a global level. Crop diversity is a vital scientific foundation of agriculture and safeguarding this to cope with future changes requires modern research techniques.”
