An innovative portal to integrate knowledge, resources and services for the grape scientific community and industry
Imagine a single open access platform, allowing data exploration and visualization of all grapevine genetic, omics and phenotyping resources, with tools for comparative analysis and customized services
Online tools and databases are key to exploit the potential offered by genomic advances to both research and industry. In plants, the final goal of these resources is to contribute towards crop improvement, which, whether achieved through selective breeding or biotechnological strategies, is largely dependent on the cumulative knowledge of a plant species’ genome (and pangenome) and its containing genes. Acquiring this knowledge is especially challenging in grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.), one of the oldest fruit crops grown worldwide. Well-established research communities studying model organisms have created and maintained, through public and private funds, a diverse range of online tools and databases serving as repositories of genomes and gene function data. The lack of such resources for the non-model, but economically important Vitis vinifera species drives the need for a standardized collection of assets within the grapevine community.
Despite the huge amount of work done by the community since the first release of the grapevine genome sequence in 2007, and the recent contributions from INTEGRAPE (see below) for the standardization of the data, the scenario right now is that the community still feels overwhelmed by dispersed resources available. There is much room for improvement in the community, as these resources need to be made interoperable and centralized in one single platform, offering customized solutions to the whole community built by research teams, breeders and the wine industry considering the problems now faced by climate transition.
In the GRAPEDIA portal, we will centralize, interconnect and showcase these resources, integrating them with those genomic efforts generated by the worldwide community, following a federative database structure. The target group is the entire scientific community working on grapevine or using grapevine as their model plant for an “orphan” plant species, and also the private sector working on R&D in vitiviniculture.
Brief on COST ACTION INTEGRAPE (CA17111):
Data integration to maximise the power of omics for grapevine improvement
2018 — 2022
INTEGRAPE COST Action seeks the establishment of an open, international, and representative network, insuring that omics and phenotyping data generated in the grapevine research community are being produced in a secure and standardized format, following the F.A.I.R. principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability. Amongst the most significant deliverables of INTEGRAPE:
(1) the elaboration of Guideline ‘cookbooks’ and Dictionary of unified grape-sample ontologies (some of which have already being published; e.g., Savoi et al., 2021), providing recommendations for genomic and metabolomic data acquisition, repository submission and handling of datasets, together with recommended repositories and standard formats for organ naming.
(2) the release of the PN40024 fourth genome assembly and its annotation (Velt et al., in preparation), serving as a platform for researchers to discuss and promote the diverse genomic tools associated to this reference genome.
(3) the creation of the Gene Reference Catalogue (Navarro-Payá et al., 2022), building a repository for the standard annotation of grape genes and their functions, based on past and current gene/ gene family characterizations.
(4) the enlisting of Online repositories and tools for omics data exploration and visualization, which to date are not yet interoperable among them.
Funding
We are building GRAPEDIA through the creation of a strong and unified community. In line with this philosophy, we are funded by a COST Innovators Grant (CIG), which offers community network building tools such as training schools, dissemination plans and short-term scientific missions. The Grant Holder is the University of Verona, Italy. In addition, the CIG will help us develop an efficient business plan to achieve GRAPEDIA’s commercial exploitation.
There are several companies who have been involved in INTEGRAPE activities and have explicitly manifested their interest in the results of the CIG proposal and their availability to contribute with private funds in accomplishing this platform.
We therefore welcome all public and private entities to join this effort. Write to grapedia (at) grapedia.org if you are interested. Donations and Sponsoring are now available.
Header image: © Romolo Tavani #90611493, 2019 source:stock.adobe.com