The Plant Trait Ontology Links Wheat Traits for Crop Improvement and Genomics

Global population growth and climate change result in the need to develop new and better-adapted wheat varieties. Three integrated resources, the Plant Trait Ontology (TO), the Crop Ontology (CO) and the GrainGenes database provide researchers and plant breeders interconnected tools and resources to utilize the large amounts of genetic and genomic data that are available for plant genomics and crop improvement. The TO is a reference-level ontology for plant traits, and is a key part of the Planteome Project. In the current Planteome Release Version 4.0, the TO consists of more than 1500 plant traits organized into nine upper-level categories: biochemical, biological process, plant growth and development, plant morphology, plant quality, plant vigor, plant stress and yield. As part of the Planteome, the TO is integrated with the Plant Ontology, and is used to annotate, or link to plant genomics and genetics data objects (e.g. germplasm, QTLs, genes, and proteins) from a wide variety of plant taxa, including important world crops and model plant species. In this Release, there are more than four million annotations linking TO terms to about 165,000 data objects in the Planteome database. Users are encouraged to submit requests for new TO terms or comments through the TO GitHub Issue Tracker.