DivSeek – Harnessing the power of crop diversity to feed the future

Approximately seven million crop accessions are currently being conserved in genebanks collections worldwide. This resource represents one of the greatest, largely untapped, opportunities for accelerating yield gains and overcoming emerging crop productivity bottlenecks. However to access this wealth of diversity will require the characterization of this material via the application of state-of-the-art genomic, phenomic and molecular technologies, and the release of the subsequent data via an online, open-access portal. The Diversity Seek initiative (DivSeek) works with existing, emerging and future initiatives to characterize crop diversity, and to form a collaborative network of genebanks, breeders, plant and crop scientists, database and computational experts that develop a unified, coordinated and cohesive information management platform to provide easy access to genotypic and phenotypic data associated with genebank germplasm.