Cereal Resources in National BioResource Project of Japan

Abstract

The National BioResource Project of Japan is a governmental project to promote domestic/international research activities using biological resources. The project has 27 biological resources including three cereal resources. The core center and sub-center which historically collected the cereal resources were selected for each cereal program. These resources are categorized into several different types in the project; germplasm, genetic stocks, genome resources and database information. Contents of rice resources are wild species, local varieties in East and Southwest Asia & wild relatives, MNU-induced chemical mutant lines, marker tester lines, chromosome substitution lines and other experimental lines. Contents of wheat resources are wild strains, cultivated strains, experimental lines, rye wild and cultivated strains; EST clones and full-length cDNA clones. Contents of barley resources are cultivar and experimental lines, core collection, EST/cDNA clones, BAC clones, their filters and superpool DNA. Each resource is accessible from the online database to see the contents and information about the resources. Links to the genome information and genomic tools are also important function of each database. The major contents and some examples are presented here.