NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Benson Hill Biosystems has partnered with the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center (DDPSC) to use the firm's Breed software in advancing sorghum genetics research.
The DDPSC's Transportation Energy Resources from Renewable Agriculture Phenotyping Reference Platform(TERRA-REF) program, funded by an $8 million grant from the US Department of Energy Advanced Research Program, is trying to develop improved sorghum varieties for use as feedstock and as an alternative energy source. The project will sequence more than 400 sorghum varieties.
St. Louis-based Benson Hill's Breed software application, based on its CropOS cloud-based informatics platform, will help in analyzing the data and in advancing the sorghum breeding program.
"Leveraging Breed in this partnership represents the convergence of disciplines that we need in plant science to meet our global food and energy goals," DDPSC President Jim Carrington said in a statement. "This is a terrific example of what the next generation of plant science will look like and platforms like Crops will play a major role in helping us use rapidly expanding and diverse data to deliver sustainable crop improvements."