International Journal of Plant Genomics
Volume 2008 (2008), Article ID 496957, 10 pages
doi:10.1155/2008/496957
Resource Review
MaizeGDB: The Maize Model Organism Database for Basic, Translational, and Applied Research
1USDA-ARS, Corn Insects and Crop Genetics Research Unit, Ames, IA 50011, USA
2Department of Genetics, Development and Cell Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA
3Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA
4USDA-ARS, Plant Gene Expression Center, 800 Buchanan Street, Albany, CA 94710, USA
5Department of Molecular and Biology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
6USDA-ARS, Plant Genetics Research Unit, Columbia, MO 65211, USA
7Division of Plant Sciences, University of Missouri Columbia, Columbia, MO 65211, USA
Received 31 August 2007; Accepted 10 July 2008
Academic Editor: Chunguang Du
Copyright © 2008 Carolyn J. Lawrence et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
In 2001 maize became the number one production crop in the world with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reporting over 614 million tonnes produced. Its success is due to the high productivity per acre in tandem with a wide variety of commercial uses. Not only is maize an excellent source of food, feed, and fuel, but also its by-products are used in the production of various commercial products. Maize's unparalleled success in agriculture stems from basic research, the outcomes of which drive breeding and product development. In order for basic, translational, and applied researchers to benefit from others' investigations, newly generated data must be made freely and easily accessible. MaizeGDB is the maize research community's central repository for genetics and genomics information. The overall goals of MaizeGDB are to facilitate access to the outcomes of maize research by integrating new maize data into the database and to support the maize research community by coordinating group activities.