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With ‘Phenomics,’ Plant Scientists many crops having hit plateaus, green
thumbs are no longer enough. Modern plant
breeders need the equivalent of a watch-
Hope to Shift Breeding Into Overdrive maker’s magnifying glass and tweezers to
tinker with complex and intertwined traits.
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA— Last May, a world, consists of two nodes. One is a High Phenomics, says Uli Schurr, director of IPR,
scrawny grass, Brachypodium distachyon, Resolution Plant Phenomics Centre (HRPPC) promises to usher in “precision agriculture
joined the exclusive club of plants whose in Canberra, which opened last week. A and predictive breeding.”
genomes have been sequenced. Brachy- debut project of the center is an international One trait Australia has in its cross hairs is
podium may look unassuming, but under the collaboration to screen Brachypodium vari- salt tolerance. High salinity affects one-fifth
hood it is a geneticist’s dream. It has a short ants for drought-tolerance and for less lignin of the world’s irrigated land and two-thirds
life cycle and a small genome with one pair of in their cell walls. The second node is the of Australian cereal crops. But selecting
chromosomes (wheat, for instance, has three Plant Accelerator in Adelaide, a screening plants for salt tolerance has generally
pairs) that readily reveals the effects of genetic facility that Tester will run and aims to get flopped. “We can end up with plants like
SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING
faking of stem cell data by South Korean nals, and other players to develop standards Yamada, an editor of The Journal of Cell
researcher Woo Suk Hwang, including cut- and provide proper training. The sugges- Biology, which has worked out ways to
and-pasted cell images in a 2005 paper in tions include a few new points—for exam- screen for manipulated images that other
Science. Faced with other examples of data ple, data-sharing should include not just the journals have followed, calls the report’s
manipulation, a group of journal editors raw data but also the computer programs principles “an excellent foundation on
asked the academies for advice in 2006. used to analyze it. But there are no detailed which fields can build.” But he suggests a
Academies officials added a second contro- guidelines. “Phase Two” academies study focusing on
versy they considered related: demands The problem was that every time a pan- digital imaging in biology. Katrina Kelner,
from a global-warming skeptic in Congress elist made a detailed proposal, another managing editor, research journals at
for data from the scientists who published member would say it would not work in their Science, who calls the report “welcome”
the so-called hockey stick paper in 1998 in and the principles “useful,” expects jour-
*Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship
Nature that shows rising global tempera- of Research Data in the Digital Age, The National nals themselves may have to work out the
tures since 1900. Then the academies con- Academies Press specifics. –JOCELYN KAISER