National BioResource Project Wheat: Overview 2010

Takashi Endo

Laboratory of Plant Genetics, Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan

Corresponding author: Takashi Endo

E-mail: trendo@kais.kyoto-u.ac.jp

The National BioResource Project (NBRP)-Wheat, which started its second term in 2007-2011, stores and supplies the wild species, landraces, and experimental strains of wheat and related species, and also EST and TAC clones of wheat that have been collected during the first term of the NBRP-Wheat (2002-2006). These resources can be requested online (http://www.shigen.nig.ac.jp/wheat/komugi/top/top.jsp). Besides, the second-term NBRP-Wheat is focusing on the characterization of DNA markers that would be useful in gene isolation, and obtained data is going to be released in the database KOMUGI. It is also continuing to collect ESTs from different cDNA libraries. The project is implemented by the Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University (core facility) and the Kihara Institute for Biological Research, Yokohama City University (sub-facility). During the period of 2009.4.1~2010.3.31, a total of 2464 strains were distributed on 87 requests (42 from domestic institutions and 45 from overseas institutions). Regrettably, beginning on April 1st 2010, the NBRP-Wheat has started to charge handling and shipping fees for any request of resources. This change is to be demanded based on the policy of self-sustainability of distribution service of the resources (for details, visit  http://www.shigen.nig.ac.jp/wheat/komugi/request/explanation.jsp).