BEIJING - Chinese researchers have developed a knowledge base for molecular breeding of rice to facilitate the breeding of different rice varieties.

With the development of genome sequencing technology, large amounts of genomic and phenotypic data have been accumulated in the fields of crop genomic research. The integration and deep mining of these data are key for crop breeding.

Researchers from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a database which integrates more than 7,000 sets of global rice re-sequencing data, large amount of rice germplasm resources information, as well as annotations of more than 13,000 rice genes, many of which are related to improved rice quality, disease-resistance and high yield.

The database also provides advanced online tools for germplasm screening, individual comparison and variation analysis.

The research also offers a reference for the database on the molecular breeding of other crops such as soybeans, wheat and corn.

The research was published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.